


Sunsets & Sunrises

by Paint_Stained_Heart



Category: Brave (2012), Disney - All Media Types, Disney - Fandom, Disney Princesses, Tangled (2010)
Genre: Ableism, Activism, Alternate Universe - High School, Disability, F/F, Fandom Trumps Hate, Fluff and Angst, High School AU, Hurt/Comfort, Lesbian Princesses!!!, Modern AU, Physical Disability, Quadriplegic, Trigger Warning: suicidal ideation (briefly), Trigger warning: hospitals, quadriplegic!Rapunzel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 10:51:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 44,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10852458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paint_Stained_Heart/pseuds/Paint_Stained_Heart
Summary: For Rapunzel and Merida, high school was hard enough between studying, soccer practice, and finishing sculptures in the art studio. When the two of them start dating, teen angst and teen hormones somehow become manageable, but a black wave coming out of nowhere throws a big fat wrench in just about all of that.





	Sunsets & Sunrises

**Author's Note:**

> This work was created for the incredible Fandom Trump Hates project, and raised $55 for The Nature Conservancy. I had a lot of inspiration from the auction winner and fell in love with this Universe and their love, while learning a whole lot about ableism in American society. So fuck Donald Trump, and enjoy >.<
> 
> One precaution: I am not an expert in paralysis, wheelchairs, disabilities, or ableism, and it was a hefty topic to take on, so I did the best I could but please feel free to educate or correct me. 
> 
> In solidarity <3

_I don't feel any pain_  
_A little fall of rain_  
_Can hardly hurt me now_  
_You're here, that's all I need to know_  
_And you will keep me safe_  
_And you will keep me close_  
_And rain will make the flowers grow_

There was something divine about the way Rapunzel leaned against her locker, Merida thought as she made her way down the hallway after school. It wasn’t just any school day, though – it was the last day of their sophomore year, and the hallways buzzed with excitement as three months of summer vacation sprawled lazily before them. The seniors were giddy with anticipation; so tangible was it that even Belle, the most studious girl at school, had pulled her nose out of her book to let the contagious energy course through her. The teachers had a skip in their step. Groups gathered in clumps in the hallways, chattering away about summer plans and sunny days ahead. Rumor had it that Gaston, the quarterback of the football team, was holding a huge banger that night. Word on the street was that there would be more alcohol bottles than there are exits on the Parkway.

But it was Merida who was glowing as she snuck up behind her girlfriend unawares, wrapped her arms around Rapunzel’s waist, and pulled her close, straining slightly to plant a kiss on her cheek. She kind of loved that Rapunzel was taller than her.

“Hey, you.” If a voice could have an emoji, Merida’s was winking.

“Oof! You _scared_ me,” Rapunzel huffed, laughing as she leaned back comfortably into Merida’s touch, shifting her weight off of the peeling locker and into Merida’s arms. After a moment, she spun around – long golden hair whipping Merida in the face – and before Merida could even utter an “ow,” Rapunzel had thrown her arms around her neck to kiss her properly on the mouth. Merida smiled into the press of Rapunzel’s lips, impressed; Rapunzel was normally shy, a little quiet, certainly not keen on PDA. But it was the last day of school, the one and only art teacher at the high school had just given Rapunzel an A on her final project, and her girlfriend – the most badass young woman she’d ever met – was in her arms. Celebration was in order.

Merida had first asked Rapunzel out in mid-December. For someone with a cool outer shell and a relative safety net of popularity, Merida was the first to admit that she’d nearly pissed herself the day she texted Rapunzel to meet her after school. They met in the art studio, of course – Rapunzel almost always lingered there after school, tongue poking out as she added “just one more thing, I swear!!” to a near-perfect piece. Merida had ridden her chocolate-brown Vespa to school that day and leaned against it awkwardly outside of the art building as she asked Rapunzel to go to First Friday, the local art fair on the first Friday of every month, with her. On a date. Like, a _real_ date. Rapunzel had half-smiled, tucked a long blond strand behind her ear, and nodded. _Yes._

“I’ll pick you up at five. Tomorrow. I mean, Friday!” Merida annunciated in her thick accent, winking. Without a moment of hesitation, she sped off, stomach churning in the best of ways. She couldn’t help smiling from ear to ear as she rode home, the gray buildings of Newark blurring by, her unwieldy ginger curls a wild flame behind her.

It had been a long time coming.

 

Rapunzel had known the exact moment she’d started to have a crush on Merida, the red-headed unapologetic girl who sat in the front of every class but goofed off anyway. It was freshman year, and the girls had biology together. They’d arrived at the dreaded week of sex ed, which had Rapunzel blushing in the back and doodling in her notebook, eyes anywhere but the front of the classroom. At one point, the teacher – kind of like a substitute but sent in solely to make hormonal teenagers uncomfortable about their genitals – did the tape thing. The one where they pull out a long piece of duct tape and show all the students how ‘clean’ it is. Then they stick it on a bunch of stuff. Their sweater. The counter. The tabletops. And they tell the students that once the piece of tape has been stuck, it can’t be unstuck. That it loses its stickiness. Overall, it’s a pretty fucked up and problematic sex ed practice, which Rapunzel was thinking quietly to herself when...

“Look at it,” the sex ed teacher commanded, showing the tape in all of its robust grossness, the dust particles and hairs and crumbs overtly apparent. “Who would want this?” She asked rhetorically. The room was silent for a minute.

“I would.”

Rapunzel knows the voice immediately. It’s the cute redhead with the thick Scottish accent, whose family moved to town only a year and a half ago. There’s something about the bravery of it, the confidence with which she speaks, that has Rapunzel peeking out from behind her notebook.

“I would want the piece of tape. It’s still a piece of tape. You can’t make it less of a piece of tape. No offense, but that’s bullshit.” The teacher glared at Merida, and Merida glared back. It wasn’t unusual for Merida to get sent to the principal’s office, or take a letter home to her mother (that she always forged the signature on), or spend an afternoon in detention. But weighing the options, the teacher decided to move on, huffing, and Merida sank smugly back into her seat.

For the rest of class, Rapunzel tries not to notice that the mindless sketching she’s been doing looks remarkably like the girl’s curls...

 

It took Merida longer to notice Rapunzel. When she moved to New Jersey, her mother’d made her try out for the school soccer team and, begrudgingly, it had gone incredibly well, though Merida would never give her mother the credit. Soccer soon consumed her life; she was an athlete through and through: tough, muscular, and lean. Her world was hair ties and granola bars, shin guards and practice schedules. As the team’s best forward, she spent far more time thinking about how she would be scoring goals in the afternoon games than on school, and certainly more than any kind of relationship. On the whole, Merida thought dating in high school was generally stupid. She’d fought the family move to the United States tooth and nail, and she certainly wasn’t about to give her mother the satisfaction that she’d found a nice American boy.

It wasn’t until Merida was a sophomore that she started realizing why she hadn’t ever had interest in dating. It wasn’t _dating_ so much as...boys. Boys, who she’d always written off as immature, or lazy, or just generally annoying. She did have three little brothers – triplets, after all, so it wasn’t like she didn’t have firsthand experience with the specimens. But as she got older, and the other girls on the team started texting boys and hanging out with them at the mall and gushing, Merida started to realize her feelings were different.

Coming out to the team was probably the most anticlimactic thing that Merida ever did. She’d prepared a whole speech, embraced the fact that she’d lose some of her friends, thought of quick replies to soothe their worries that she’d been peeking in the locker room...She’d been unforgiving, threatening that anyone who had a problem with her sexuality could go–

“Merida, what kind of girls are you into!? There’s a girl on the tennis team that you would get along with soooo well!” jabbered the goalie.

“Omg! I knew it! Do you have a crush on anyone?”

“Yassss queen!!!”

“Love me a woman-loving-woman.”

“I’m so proud of you!!”

There was a lot of hugging and sincerity and laughter. That day on the field, Merida played like a demigod, leaving the field grass-stained with a hat trick under her belt and a lightness in her being that she hadn’t felt since the family moved from her beloved hometown. From then on, her confidence restored and her eyes open, Merida began to take note of the clever girl who sat in the back of the class. The girl with graphite stains on her palms and the goofiest smile in the world. The girl who stared out the window and hummed like she didn’t even realize she was humming. The girl who seemed to get the highest grade on every test but never uttered a word about it. The girl with the golden hair, the full, pink lips, and hips that swayed in ways that weren’t human, _couldn’t be._

Merida wasn’t one for pining. Or patience. Or biting her tongue. It became evidently clear that Merida had taken interest in Rapunzel when over the course of one week, she’d moved four rows back in biology. A month later, Merida had Rapunzel’s number. There was already a purple heart emoji next to her name in her contacts.

 

Rapunzel is lip-bitingly cute when Merida shows up on Friday evening, all dolled up in a short maroon dress with strained leggings, two silver hoop earrings and a messy bun. Merida felt underdressed in her _Nasty Woman_ T-shirt and skinny jeans, but the thought was soon forgotten when Rapunzel stepped up to the moped, hopped on, and wove her thin arms around Merida’s waist tightly, a whispered “hi” at the base of her neck. For the most soft-spoken girl in class, Rapunzel certainly knew how to be, well, bold.

The art fair made for the perfect first date. There was a hot chocolate station (which included teasingly lickable whipped cream). There was a winter-themed photo booth. There was bountiful art; Rapunzel flitted between tables, intrigued by everything from the succulents to the handmade soaps, the bottle cap necklaces to the homemade ornaments. They tried on knit caps and admired a locals’ photo gallery, another’s whittling. Merida was a storyteller, chattering away a step behind Rapunzel, telling her about how her mother is stubborn as all hell but how she still loves her to death, how she’s always nagging about _no phones at the table_ , how her three brothers seem to get away with playing Angry Birds despite the rule, how she’s nervous about next year’s soccer tryouts since rumor has it there are some great middle schoolers who’ll be coming to the high school, how black bears are her spirit animal, how she’s tired of being mistaken for Irish and how much she despises St. Patrick’s Day.

Rapunzel listened eagerly and humbly, enjoyed the flaming energy she was coming to know as Merida. They’d talked, of course – plenty in biology, and then some after school, and occasionally when Rapunzel started showing up at the women’s soccer games (“it’s for an _art_ project,” she’d lied through her teeth when Merida asked about it in class the next day). But never one-on-one. She liked having Merida’s undivided attention.

It wasn’t until Rapunzel stumbled on a booth of wilderness paintings that Merida realized how much all of this really meant to Rapunzel. She was absorbed. Mesmerized. She looked at a painting of a golden eagle and you could swear it was talking to her. The paint strokes whispered. She was dancing in the painted fields, the golden light glowing on her cheeks. And God, the questions! Rapunzel was full of them, wanting to know about the paints they used, the brushes, the techniques, were they morning or evening painters. Merida looked on, a step behind, leaning casually against one of the temporary walls, a tender smile on her face and a warm feeling somewhere in her gut.

As the afternoon wore on, Rapunzel started to get tired, ready for something to snack on and a place to sit down. She eventually found a bench and nodded toward it as if to ask Merida if she wanted to grab a seat.

They did. Merida was full of questions. Not the kinds of questions other people asked, like where you want to go to college and what you got on number ten of the math homework and if you were going to prom or if you were too cool for it. Merida wanted to know what the scariest thing Rapunzel had ever done was (scuba diving, at night) and where her name came from (it’s related to Germanic word for purple flower, according to my dads) and if she were a poem, which would she be (something from rupi kaur’s _milk & honey_, probably). Their knees touched as they sat close, legs pressing together and shoulders bumping.

 

After the evening at the art fair, the two of them were inseparable. It started with studying at the Starbucks across the street from the high school every Wednesday, the girls soon able to recite each other’s coffee orders (an almond milk dirty chai for Merida and a Passion Tea with extra strawberry pumps for ‘Punzel). Well, Rapunzel studied while Merida slurped her chai, scrolling on her phone, weasling her converse in between Rapunzel’s ankles, just to see the half-smile creep on ‘Punzel’s face without looking up. Then Merida started hanging around on Mondays, when Rapunzel stayed late to help paint the set panels for the theater program. She would dribble a soccer ball in the back hallways, juggling the ball and yammering away to Rapunzel who flicked paint elegantly across the boards, a furrow in her eyebrows as she concentrated and responded to Merida’s chatter. Soon, all of her jeans were splattered with paint.

Tuesdays and Thursdays found Rapunzel in the bleachers, cheering for a sport she’d never cared for until #14 had started holding her hand between classes. She loved watching Merida play, seeing the determination course through her Scottish veins. Merida could get past any defense in the tri-state area. Rapunzel whooped and cheered, leaving homework undone in her lap as Merida moved like a fox across the field.

Fridays were family night at the DunBroch household, which usually meant a rowdy dinner – Mum would prepare a big supper all day – and it was sure to be a lively event, with the misbehaved dogs running around and under the table, the boys jumping up and reenacting something ridiculous from school, all shouts and pointed elbows and “QUIET DOWN” and “Mooooom” and “Oh, let the kiddos have their fun!” It wasn’t long before Rapunzel’s honey-gold curls started making a regular appearance at their dinner table.

It got to the point where people just started to assume that where Merida went, Rapunzel followed, and vice versa.

They drove out to the beach, sprawled on Merida’s blanket, watching the sun. Rapunzel’s sketchbooks became full of silhouettes of Merida – her hands, her cheekbones, the familiar smirk of her lips and her uncanny, mischievous smile. Rebellious, Merida would sneak out of her house some nights to watch Rapunzel paint into the wee hours of the morning. Rapunzel, ever the creative one, found new ways to leave notes and doodles in Merida’s locker, in her books, underneath the desks she knew Merida would sit at in 5th and 6th hour. A small golden black bear charm made an appearance on Merida’s neck after Valentine’s Day, a quiet nod to Rapunzel’s new favorite nickname for her: Bear. Merida didn’t lose a single soccer game when she wore the necklace.

They were happy. Plain and simple.

* * * * *

Merida and Rapunzel hadn’t planned precisely what they would do, now that it was the last day of school and their routines were thrown off. Merida’s parents still didn’t know they were dating, so going to Merida’s place was a no-go if they wanted to cuddle. Merida wanted to spend some time kissing her girlfriend, dammit. It was the first sunny day in weeks, and the girls mutually decided it would be better to be outside (to be fair, Rapunzel _always_ argued it was better to be outside, even in the pouring rain). It took them almost no time to decide to go to the beach; an hour and a half after the final bell rang, Merida and Rapunzel were holding hands, toes in the sand of Coney Island Beach, wandering along the Atlantic as the sun started to dip in the sky. It was playful. Rapunzel eyed the tide pools, poking and preening and endlessly curious. Merida stripped to her sports bra and spandex to jump into the ocean. She was shameless that way. She emerged with a bit of seaweed knotted in her darkened, damp hair, splashing Rapunzel and rushing out of the ocean to give her a big, dripping wet hug. It made Rapunzel laugh and squeal, a tinkling if there ever was one.

“I liked sophomore year,” Rapunzel said, looking out at the waves. “It was good to me.”

“You think every day is good to you,” Merida laughed. “You’re the most optimistic person I know.”

“What was your favorite part?”

“Hmm,” Merida pondered, thumb tracing circles on the back of ‘Punzel’s hand, her other hand mindlessly fingering her necklace. “I liked the night when you tried a Red Bull for the first time. And you texted me through the whole night, and I could just imagine you, excitedly running around your room, jazzed about everything. I think you had, like, three existential crises that night.”

Rapunzel put her face in her hands, feigning embarrassment and groaning, “I told you I didn’t need caffeine.”

“That was the first night you said, ‘I love you,’ though,” Merida smiled.

“It was,” Rapunzel beamed, pulling her face from her hands, her mood changing immediately.

“What was your favorite part? Of the year?” Merida asked.

“It’s silly.”

“It is absolutely not silly! I told you mine.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Rapunzel giggled, pulling Merida’s hand into both of hers and playing absentmindedly with her fingers “There was this night that you were over at my house. It was early on, you know, we’d only been dating for a couple weeks. And we were watching a movie on the futon, but you had fallen asleep in my lap, and I was starting to doze off...and my dads walked in–”

“ _This_ is your favorite part of sophomore year? Your dads walking in on us?!”

“Hang _on_ ,” Rapunzel snorted. “They thought I was asleep too, nuzzled up against you. And I heard them whispering. My dads were saying that they’d...never seen me so happy. I don’t know. It just felt like... a family.”

“Babe.” And Merida’s hands were in Rapunzel’s hair, clutching onto fistfuls of the silk as she pressed her lips against Rapunzel’s with just a hint of desperation, an eagerness. Rapunzel’s hands quickly found Merida’s waist and they pulled each other miraculously closer.

They continued their trek along the waterfront, hands held and swinging between them like a happy pendulum, Merida chattering away and making Rapunzel burst into laughter, every once in a while becoming distracted by a hermit crab or gull or particularly fluffy cloud, eyes alight with wonder.

Before long, they started to hear something – music. Loud music. A party. The dots connected – these were all kids from high school celebrating the coveted end of GPAs and quizzes, PE and student council elections. Rapunzel was keen to turn back – parties weren’t exactly her cup of tea – but the girls had been spotted. A mostly sober Jasmine, a good friend of Merida’s who had tutored her through chemistry and played forward with her on the soccer team, had jogged up to them, olive skin shimmering with droplets of water, contrasting her pale blue bikini.

“Rapunzel! Merida! How _are_ you guys?!” She greeted happily. Jasmine was probably the most sought-after girl in their entire class, though it was common knowledge that she was happily taken by Aladdin, the undoubtedly charming student body president. The girls all hugged, as sophomores do, and with all the right intentions Jasmine invited Merida and Rapunzel to the party.

“Come hang with us! The _whole_ school is here,” Jasmine persuaded.

Merida and Rapunzel could see it in the distance; there was a volleyball court set up, Aladdin had started barbecuing, Gaston had scored booze (hidden cleverly in flasks and water bottles and emptied suntan lotions) as promised. Although a polite “No, thank you,” had bubbled up on Rapunzel’s lips, Merida looked at her pleadingly with those big blue eyes. Most of these folks were Merida’s friends, after all. Afraid of holding Merida back, Rapunzel sighed and relaxed her shoulders. One party couldn’t hurt.

“We won’t stay long, I promise,” Merida whispered, so only Rapunzel could hear. Her soothing hand moved to the small of Rapunzel’s back.

“Thatta girl!” Jasmine chimed, leading them by the hands to the party, practically skipping.

Everyone on the soccer team – Merida’s team – was there. The jocks were there, the misfits, the nerds. Esmerelda was leaning across a picnic table, flirting away. Eric and Hercules were whooping Gaston and Eugene in beach volleyball. Tiana – who did all the tech for the school’s theater program – finally got to show off her real talent as she DJ’d the party.

Rapunzel didn’t drink. It wasn’t her thing. She and Merida worked hard on taking care of their bodies – Merida as a student athlete, Rapunzel as a firm believer in meditation and clarity of mind. Plus, it was against the rules, and Rapunzel was nothing if not a rule-follower. It always amazed Merida to think about the ways in which they were polar opposites. Merida, the girl who stood up in class and refused to take an exam that asked participants to bubble in if they were male or female. “Why do we have to pick one?! It’s bullshit!” she’d declared. Merida, the one who had come out to her team in the locker room and demanded that if anyone had a problem with it, they could suck a dick (of course, none of them had, and there had been an immediate effort to set Merida up with someone). Merida, who was outspoken and unruly, rebellious and unfiltered, with sweet Rapunzel. Rapunzel, who baked cookies for the boy who sat alone at lunch every day. Rapunzel, who had far more to say with her paintbrush than her mouth (that is, when she wasn’t kissing her girlfriend silly). Rapunzel, who brought injured pigeons into her house to nurse them back to life. Merida laughed at miracle of it all, the unlikeliness that such happiness had found this most unlikely of couples and brought them together.

The girls remained sober as they joined the festivities. The sun glowed orange against the horizon as young bodies swayed to the music, chomped Doritos, bad-mouthed teachers that had given them shitty grades, giggled when Cinderella, the gorgeous cheerleader, started kissing Tarzan. There were hoots when she undid his man-bun and wrought her fingers in his hair. Rapunzel, far less conventionally popular or social than Merida, shadowed her girlfriend, clinging close to her side throughout the night, perking up only to growl at the childish boys hitting on Merida because she looked hot in her sports bra. Rapunzel couldn’t disagree, of course, but she certainly wasn’t about to share.

“Grow _up_ ,” Rapunzel hissed at a freshman, Peter something. He slumped off, tail between his legs, toward the table where people were doing shots.

It came as a shock to Rapunzel when Merida agreed to a game of frisbee, apologetically detangling herself from Rapunzel’s grip with a kiss on her forehead before running off into the ocean with the girls from the team. Rapunzel felt awkward. She tried to chat up Moana, who had stationed herself by the speakers and was complimenting Tiana’s music taste, but the music drowned out their voices and Rapunzel gave up. There was no point in dancing without Merida to spin around, and if she ate any more chips she would explode.

With a sigh, Rapunzel jogged toward where Merida was in the water. When she saw Rapunzel running toward her in her elegant, long white sundress, a smile broke across her face – the kind of smile that reminded Rapunzel why she’d stayed at the damned party the entire time.

She partook in the game for a few beats, laughing along with Merida’s friends as the neon green frisbee flitted between them. Although she didn’t play a sport, Rapunzel was lean and limber, strong from yoga and long runs. It warmed Merida’s heart to see ‘Punzel fit in with her friends.

Eventually, Rapunzel made her way over to Merida, gold hair soaked and bright green eyes glistening.

“Hello, beautiful,” Merida greeted, admiring Rapunzel’s now-drenched white dress, a crooked smile on her lips.

“Hi, you,” Rapunzel replied, butterflies in her stomach as she nudged Merida.

“Let’s get out of here?” Merida suggested, and a wave of relief passed visibly across ‘Punzel’s face, cheeks flushed.

Without warning, Merida dipped her arm into the water, sweeping Rapunzel off her feet and holding her honeymoon-style in the darkening waters. Merida hadn’t realized just how dark it had gotten. Only the last blood-orange embers of sunset remained in the sky, protesting day’s end.

Rapunzel blushed happily, long hair just barely grazing the surface of the water as Merida swung her around. It wasn’t terribly deep – maybe three feet – and she could feel Merida’s heartbeat through her chest, their skin pressed together.

Undoubtedly showing off, Merida proceeded to carry Rapunzel through the waters, ignoring the shouted complaints of her friends to come back, they hadn’t finished the game yet! Instead, she nuzzled her nose against Rapunzel’s, feeling like the luckiest girl in the world.

“Thank you, for today,” Merida said softly, genuinely.

“It was fun,” Rapunzel tried.

“I know it’s not really your scene though. I like it when the world sees us together. Thank you for humoring me tonight.”

“You know you owe me now, don’t you?” Rapunzel teased, smirking and giddy, eyes alight in the way that made Merida melt most.

“Let me guess–”

“You have to model for me!”

“Absolutely not.”

“You haaaaaave to.”

“I do not.”

“La la la, Merida’s going to model for meeeee,” Rapunzel sang, earning her a dip in the water from her oh-so-loving girlfriend. She came up sputtering to an innocent grin on Merida’s face.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Rapunzel squealed, releasing herself from Merida’s hold only to playfully jump back on her. The girls wrestled, laughing as they splashed and dunked, bodies swishing against each other below the surface, a warm feeling blossoming in each of their stomachs. They pushed against each other, both hands grasped in each others’, no real grit in it but plenty of laughter. Just as Merida was thinking that she could do this for a lifetime and a half, she noticed Rapunzel shiver, ever-so-slightly.

“You’re cold,” Merida frowned, worried and protective though she knew she needn’t be.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Rapunzel smiled back, knowing Merida was already chastising herself for being worried and protective. “I’m more than fine.”

“Let’s get going. My parents want us to watch my brothers while they go out to dinner. We can all watch a movie or something. They’re going through a superhero phase right now, I think.” Merida released herself gently from Rapunzel’s grip, altering their battle positions into one of handholding.

Just as they were emerging from the water, the last tendrils of the tide grabbing at their ankles, beads of salt water rolling down from their sun-and-sea-soaked hair, Rapunzel noticed it – the frisbee they’d been throwing around in the water, floating in the waves.

Rapunzel – sweet, Earth-loving Rapunzel who volunteered her Sunday mornings to take care of the homeless dogs at the shelter – could not bear to leave the plastic ring in the water. In perfect character, she muttered a quick, “Wait right here,” and before Merida could even register that ‘Punzel’s hand had slipped out of hers, the golden hair was already running back into the ocean, bare feet padding the sand quietly and leaving perfect impressions in their wake.

“Rapunzel, it’s fine! It’ll wash up tomorrow!” Merida yelled from shore, the tiniest bit annoyed, but mostly worried. The waters were really dark right now, the waves picking up speed; Gaston’s party had practically ended, the music a slow, smooth jazz for the stragglers -- mostly couples -- who had remained and continued to slow dance on the beach.

But Rapunzel ignored her. It was oh-so-like ‘Punzel to be stubborn and get her heart set on something. A painting. A particularly difficult puzzle. Merida.

And now the damn frisbee, ebbing up and down in the water. Merida was thankful for Rapunzel’s white dress – it made her easier to spot.

After what felt like an eon, Rapunzel finally waved her arm out of the water, victorious, green frisbee clutched tightly in her fist. Even from this distance, Merida could make out the distinct gleam of Rapunzel’s teeth as she smiled with pride. Rapunzel was a do-gooder to fault, Merida contemplated, arms crossed and shivering slightly as she watched Rapunzel swim up toward shore. Soon, Rapunzel was walking toward her, legs still underwater but torso and dress emerging, shimmering as the water cascaded off of her. Like a mermaid, Merida thought.

It happened so quickly that neither of them had time to register. One second, Rapunzel was storming the beach, white dress glowing in the newly emergent moonlight, frisbee clasped firmly in hand, hair a mess of gold and salt water, a familiar look of determination in those green eyes. The next, Merida was instinctively reaching out, shocked – helpless. A wave, black and ugly, had snuck up on Rapunzel, impossible to see against the blackness of the sky until it was on top of her.

Rapunzel was underwater. The wave had come at her hard, unexpected, smacking with unprecedented force against her skull, her neck. Her forehead crashed against an unexpected sandbar below. She tumbled for a moment, choking, salt water in her mouth, her ears, eyes shut tight against the influx of salt water, sputtering, thrashing – not thrashing – why wasn’t she thrashing?

“‘Punzel!” Merida cried when the unmistakable white dress didn’t immediately emerge from the swell. “Rapunzel!”

Merida was running – Rapunzel had only been 40, maybe 50 feet from shore when the wave came down. It didn’t take long for Merida to find her, pulling Rapunzel up from the sandy bottom.

“Rapunzel?” Merida whispered, holding her girlfriend in the water, honey-moon style but so different from how they’d been playing only minutes before. She was breathing – small but measured intakes of breath, occasionally watery with a little cough, but breathing. Merida sighed with relief as she carried Rapunzel out of the waters, legs burning in the sand beneath the weight. A few people from the party looked in their direction as Merida carried Rapunzel’s limp body all the way out of the Atlantic, setting her down on a blanket in the dry sand. Rapunzel was completely knocked out.

“Make yourselves useful and call 9-1-1” Merida barked at the onlookers whose eyes were burning holes in the back of her head. She knelt on the fabric next to Rapunzel, watched a shiver run down Rapunzel’s bodice and wished she had something to keep her warm. With a soft hand, Merida cupped Rapunzel’s face, admired the small nose, the full lips, the light sprinkling of freckles.

“Baby, I’m here. Wake up, love, it’s okay. You’re okay.” Merida was reassured by Rapunzel’s steadied, strengthening breathing, as if Merida’s very voice was bringing her back to life.

There it was – the flutter Merida had been waiting for. The flutter of two big, round blue eyes, the kind of eyes that looked full of both youthful curiosity and aged wisdom, pools of boundless energy, and caring. Eyes that could smile before the hint of one had even broken across Rapunzel’s face.

But these eyes weren’t smiling. As Rapunzel came to, she meant to reach out, reach for Merida’s hand. She couldn’t. There was a wall there. Not an actual wall, but a wall, a wall between her muscles and her brain. She tried again. Her eyebrows furrowed. She coughed.

“Oh, Lordy, I was so worried,” Merida crowed as Rapunzel came to. “I thought–”

“I can’t move,” Rapunzel interrupted, panic leaking into her voice, eyes flicking from side to side.

“You wha–”

 _“I can’t move_.”

 

Gasping. I’m gasping. I’m gasping and I can’t breathe. I’m gasping and I can’t breathe and I should be at least thrashing, arms pumping, pumping, but I’m not moving, not swimming, just gasping–

Two hands, firm, undeniably warm. Then arms. Then nothing. I’m in the summer air. My face is cold. Hair - wet. Eyes - closed. I want to cough but it doesn’t come. Muscles not working, cough not coming, sea water sour in my mouth.

Quiet. Limp. Frozen. Dark.

I crackle back to life; looking up, I see the unmistakable tangle of orange curls: Merida. Blue and red lights, pulsing. I think a siren is going off but it feels like it’s deep within my skull. Forming thoughts is ...hard. Slow. Merida is talking to someone, someone is here...

“Yes, yes, she’s breathing – I don’t know. A wave came up behind her and knocked her over but she didn’t–” a sniffle, “She didn’t get _up_. She’s scaring me, and her eyes keep rolling.” Merida, sweet Merida, is given over to tears. It hurts to hear her cry. But nothing hurts. Or does everything hurt? Merida, stop crying, _please..._

I find myself again. Come into my shapeless body. Sense the EMTs hovering, smell coffee breath poorly covered up with mint. Breathing. A black woman with dreadlocks takes my pulse just under my jaw. I feel it, feel something again. I startle her when I whisper:

“I can’t move.”

* * * * *

_Week 1_

In the movies, everything happens so fast. Merida is absolutely overwhelmed by the utter slowness of it all when it happens in real life. How long it took the police to get there. How long the EMTs dangled over Rapunzel’s eerily lifeless body. How long the ride in the ambulance to the hospital was. Admittedly, the only two things that happened quickly were the onset of tears in Merida’s eyes and the arrival of Rapunzel’s parents to the hospital.

Merida, of course, was not family. At least, not technically. The minute Rapunzel’s fathers walked in, Merida was offed, ushered into the hallway with empty assurances from a nurse who wouldn’t even make eye contact with her.

On a normal day, Merida knew Rapunzel’s dads would be happy to see her. Jeff and Greg had always been wonderful to her and supportive of their relationship – not something every sixteen-year-old gets to say. They let Merida spend the night on school nights if she and her mom had (another) row, they insisted she join them for family outings – they were extremely outdoorsy, big campers and hikers – and looked on fondly when Rapunzel and Merida built forts or snuggled up on the couch for a _Harry Potter_ marathon.

Tonight, Rapunzel’s dads looked straight through Merida, unseeing; she ghosted out of their way as they approached Rapunzel’s room – 412 – and slipped inside. Merida tried to stay in the waiting room, but her eyes drooped. There seemed little point in waiting around and suffering with the midnight ER crowd. She squirmed in her seat as the night’s haunts rolled through – first, a seven-year-old who got a fork stuck in his arm. Next, an older man jabbering away about how he could swear he’d just had a stroke. There was a pregnant woman crying, just a wreck, in the corner with both hands on her swollen belly. Just as Merida opened her phone to call her mom and get a ride home (and probably a talking-to), Greg, with his salt-and-pepper hair, square glasses, and sunken, tired eyes, emerged.

“I wanted to say thank you,” he said, pained as he walked over to where Merida waited and sat beside her on the empty chair in the waiting room. “She swallowed a lot of salt water. If you hadn’t pulled her from the ocean ...” he trailed off darkly.

“How is she?” Merida asked quickly, suddenly awake.

“Merida, I–” he sighed. It made it worse. She could tell he thought he owed her the truth.

“It’s a little hard to tell right now. She definitely has a severe concussion. She’s had some trouble talking. And remembering. She’s very slow. We’re going to have to see tomorrow if there was any memory loss. The doctors are hopeful. But Merida...” She could tell he couldn’t bring himself to say it, whatever it was.

“What is it?” She felt like she was five years old.

“Right now, and again, we don’t know for sure, but, uh, Rapunzel seems...seems to be paralyzed from the, the neck down,” he choked out.

Merida didn’t know that a heart could literally sink until she felt hers free fall.

She could picture it: Rapunzel, skipping toward her in the hallway after school. Rapunzel, climbing a tree, barefoot and confident and victorious. Rapunzel, picking berries two weekends ago. Rapunzel, painting. _Oh God,_ Rapunzel painting, tongue almost imperceptibly poking out, eyes flitting back and forth across the page, a streak of charcoal on her cheek that she hadn’t noticed, hands flying knowingly across the page, brow furrowed in her usual concentration...

It took a second for Merida to realize that the, _“No, no, no, no, no”_ chant was coming from her own mouth.

“I know, sweet pea,” Greg said, throwing his arms around her. “I know.” It was then, right there, that Merida realized she could simply no longer hold it together. An enormous sob ripped its way out of her chest, tore her in half, split her open, raw and pulsing, as she was enveloped in Greg’s embrace. There comes a point where a person must simply fall apart.

 

Merida’s mom didn’t ask any questions on the way home, for which Merida was eternally grateful. Although they didn’t exchange a word, it didn’t escape Merida’s notice that a mug of steaming cocoa, whipped cream and all, had been placed purposefully on her nightstand.

* * * * *

Rapunzel was a trooper; that much couldn’t be denied. Somehow, the girl maintained an upbeat attitude, smiling when the nurses walked in, hiding her winces when they lifted her out of bed and into the chair to wheel her down the hallway. Despite everything, she found herself grateful for her two loving dads who could afford her healthcare; grateful for a room with a big window overlooking the arboretum, the flowers and the summer foliage; grateful that she wasn’t in the oncology ward; grateful that Merida had been there to pull her from the water.

Merida would soon suspect that this was all a ruse, or at least partially, but for now, it was all that was keeping Rapunzel’s fathers sane.

‘Punzel had awoken Friday morning after sleeping for 36 hours. The first thing she’d noticed was her fathers, asleep in the corner of the room, Greg drooling just the tiniest bit on Jeff’s shoulder. She moved to sit up, rock her body into a more comfortable position, but it...was gone. She looked down. She could count them: all ten fingers, all ten toes. All four limbs looking healthy, all there. But when she went to move, nothing...happened. She was swimming and not there all at the same time, watching her limbs but somehow unable to feel the sandpaper scratch of the sheets, the papery hospital gown, the weight of her own breasts. She turned her neck. Stiff. Pain. She tried to move a finger. A toe. Nothing. Nothing. _Nothing._

It was the only time that Rapunzel screamed.

 

The cat scans came back flawless. Rapunzel was lucky, the doctors said. Just a concussion. No permanent brain damage. She had no fuzzy memories lingering like caterpillars, wouldn’t lose a single night of studying AP US history, a single memory of her dads on Christmas morning or Merida blushing, having been caught staring at ‘Punzel for too long.

They had decided to lead with the good news. They followed up with the diagnosis of a C4 spinal cord injury, the result of a dislocated high cervical vertebrae – the fourth one. Quite a doozie, if you asked Rapunzel, but of course they didn’t. Rather, doctors and nurses spewed readily prepared, supposed-to-be-comforting speeches at her, overwhelmed her dads with pamphlets, started talking therapy groups as well as physical therapy, wheelchair fittings and if she was going to go back to school again. The permanence of the condition, they said, was still unknown – they would need to wait for the swelling to go down to understand if she was C4 complete or C4 incomplete. She felt light-headed and nauseated all at the same time – the most feeling she’d had in the lower half of her body since waking up, even if it was phantom.

Because the bottom line was that Rapunzel’s body had been snapped in half. And everything from her shoulders down was, well, gone.  
______________________________________________________________________________

JERSEY CITY, NJ – Local Teen Suffers Severe Spinal Cord Injury On Beach, Doctors Say Paralysis May Be Permanent  
May 28, 2016

______________________________________________________________________________

“Quadriplegic?” Merida asked quietly at the kitchen table, when her mom got off the telephone with Jeff.

“That’s what the doctors say,” her mom responded, sighing.

“I don’t even think I know what that means. Can she talk?”

“She can talk. She can breathe on her own too, which is a miracle. She’s sharp as ever.” It was the closest her mom had come to comforting her in months. Merida knew her mom was tough stuff; working two jobs and doing night school, raising four kids, uprooting her family and starting all over in the States. Merida admired her mother’s stubbornness, recognized the strong woman in her. All the same, now was one of those times when Merida wanted her mom to be soft, just for once. To curl up in her mother’s lap and cry.

“I should visit her.”

“I think you should.”

 

It’s been a full two days since the accident. Merida’s glad to be out of her room, where she’s been pacing with angst and tears in her eyes for the last 48 hours, but she feels strange and out of place as she walks through the blast of white that is the hospital. White walls. White gloves. White, hot fluorescent lights. White coats. White masks. The sterilization hits her like a wave.

She’s wearing a T-shirt that Rapunzel got for her only a few weeks ago, as a surprise. It’s a deep emerald with Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt, on the front of it. It’s a sketch Rapunzel did herself and ironed on. She figured she would need to bring some mad lady power with her into that hospital room, and she was right, even if a tad superstitious.

Merida arrives at room 412 far before she is ready to. Merida, a girl who has never hesitated once in her life, who has held her head high through every curve it through at her, through every disappointed lecture from her mother, through every catcall and every “faggot,” through the time Timmy O’Connell called her fat in the sixth grade, through every lost soccer game, through the cross-Atlantic move and leaving all she knew behind in Scotland, is finally standing before the one door that she cannot open: Rapunzel’s.

A deep breath. Another. Her knuckles make contact with the door. Her knees quiver.

Jeff opens it, gray hair unkempt and free from its normal comb over and shackles of gel, his matching gray eyes taking her in. “Merida, hello. Come in.”

She moves into the room like a ghost, completely unsure what to expect, or even what Rapunzel will look like.

Rapunzel’s in the bed, of course – she should have known she would be in the bed – a pile of pillows propping her up so she almost looks like she’s sitting. Her hands are folded in her lap, above the light blue covers of the hospital bed, but they look awkward, like they’ve been placed like that (which of course they have). For a girl who could never seem to sit still, Rapunzel is oddly statue-like, marble and frozen, but beautiful nonetheless. Her blond hair is pulled back in a messy bun (not cute messy, actually messy – dad-using-a-hair-tie-for-the-first-time messy) and a small smile starts to pull at the corners of her lips when she lays eyes on her best friend. She looks smaller and paler than Merida remembered.

“Mer,” she breathes. It’s like coming home.

“Hiya, ‘Punzel,” Merida says, awkwardly, taking up too much space in the small room.

“Jeff, want to go grab a coffee? I’m undercaffeinated,” Greg said, timely, winking at both of the girls. Jeff pursed his lips, understanding, and put a hand briefly on Merida’s shoulder, _thank you_ , before stepping out with his husband, coats draped over their arms.

“They’re so embarrassing,” Rapunzel sighed, her voice rougher than Merida expected, as her dads slipped out of the room. For some reason, Merida is surprised that Rapunzel had spoken. And to find her awake. Merida somehow had imagined this moment without talking, just able to watch Rapunzel as she slept. But Rapunzel is present and alert as Merida steps inside. She was bathed in sunlight – the window was open, of course, it wouldn’t be Rapunzel if it wasn’t – and for someone who had recently lost movement in all four of her limbs, she seemed oddly...lively.

“Oh, I like ‘em,” Merida defended Jeff and Greg, feeling some kinship with Rapunzel’s fathers at this particular moment. She moved closer to Rapunzel’s bedside now, leaning in briefly to kiss her forehead, her curtain of red curls shielding them briefly from the world.

“I missed you,” Rapunzel looked up, helplessly, from her nest of pillows.

“The doctors wouldn’t let me see you,” Merida explained, hovering a few inches above Rapunzel as she leaned over her bedside. “I was going to text you, but–” _but you can’t text me back without the use of your hands._

“You can sit down, if you want,” Rapunzel said then, thinking of Merida even as she lay paralyzed in a hospital bed. A saint among us, Merida smiled to herself.

“What are you smiling about?!” Rapunzel accused, starting to sound like herself.

“You’re the nicest person I’ve ever met,” Merida laughed, shaking her head in disbelief. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe that you’re real. Or that someone like me landed someone like you.”

“You’re awfully sappy today,” Rapunzel shot back, crinkling her nose. It was something Merida would come to appreciate; the facial expressions that kept Rapunzel, well, Rapunzel. Even when the rest of her wasn’t.

“You bring it out of me,” Merida snorted, finally setting her backpack down and pulling up a chair next to Rapunzel’s bed. Although Rapunzel had movement of her neck and shoulders, everything was stiff, bruised and sore from the incident. But still, she made the effort – a long one, admittedly – to turn her head just to face her girlfriend, take her all in.

“You don’t have to do that, look, I can sit over here–”

“No,” Rapunzel said, with concrete resolve in her voice that Merida had never quite heard there before. “I’ve got this.” Merida should’ve known. Rapunzel was a fighter.

They talked about everything and nothing. Rapunzel wanted to hear all about the kids from school – was Jasmine hungover? Had Gaston’s parents found out about the party? She learned that Pocahontas had started a petition in the school district to change Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day, that Peter – the douche-canoe that hit on Merida at the party – had had his ass handed to him on Twitter by Tink (@manicpixiedreamgirl), one of the flyers on the cheer team. Merida went on and on about the drama of the week, the news, the latest shenanigans her brothers had gotten into. The only topic that didn’t come up was Rapunzel’s condition. Perhaps neither of them were quite ready to address the quadriplegic in the room, or what it would mean for them.

The end of visiting hours crept up on them, snuck up on them, really. Rapunzel couldn’t bear to watch Merida leave – to watch her walk away from her, untamed curls swinging across her back.

“Okay, ‘Punz, the nurses are coming, I– I think I’ve got to head out,” Merida said, growing quiet. “I’ll see you soon, sweetheart.” Merida went to touch Rapunzel, somehow, but recoiled, nervous and unsure. She felt like a foreigner, and for the first time the feeling had nothing to do with her being a Scottish immigrant. She left quietly, shy and small, an uncomfortable laugh on her lips that didn’t reach her eyes.

It didn’t escape Rapunzel’s notice. She went cold. She should have known. She should have known that Merida wouldn’t want her anymore. She couldn’t blame her.

* * * * *

“Hello, dear,” Dr. Something said, coming to check her blood sugar. A nurse had just been in a minute ago to stretch her limbs and readjust her (so she wouldn’t get bed sores, a term that still made Rapunzel shudder). The doctors were in and out constantly, a revolving door. She couldn’t keep track of them. Each one was a stranger. And she couldn’t move.

Just outside the room, where they thought she couldn’t see, Rapunzel’s dads wrapped their arms around one another in utter and incomprehensible exhaustion, tears in their eyes. Rapunzel couldn’t bring herself to look away as the doctor checked her blood pressure for the second time that day.

“I don’t know how to be strong anymore, Greg,” Jeff sobbed, tears staining his shirt outside of the hospital room. “We’ve been her dads for sixteen years, and I feel like I don’t know _how_ to be a dad anymore.”

“ _Shhh,_ ” Greg whispered back, one dark hand on Jeff’s shoulder, running the other through his salt-and-pepper hair. “We’re gonna be okay, honey. We’re gonna be okay. I don’t know how – God, I have no clue how. But we are. That’s our baby in there.

“That’s our girl.”

Rapunzel turned her head – suddenly heavy – back to her doctors, and tried not to choke on whatever emotion was building up in her chest.

* * * * * *

_Week 2_

_Google: “quadriplegics”_  
_About 233,000 results (.058 seconds)_  
_quad-ri-ple-gic_  
_/ˌkwädrəˈplējik/_  
_noun_  
_plural noun: quadriplegics_  
_a person affected by paralysis of all four limbs_

_Average lifetime costs for quadriplegics, age of injury 25: $1.35 million_

_Percentage of SCI individuals unemployed eight years after injury: 63%_

_Complete injuries result in total loss of sensation and function below the injury level_

_Overall, 85% of SCI patients, who survive the first 24 hours are still alive 10 years later, compared with 98% of non-SCI population given similar age and sex._

Merida sucked in a deep breath, and read on.

* * * * *

There’s a knock on the door. Rapunzel isn’t sure who to expect. The analog clock on the wall tells her that’s it’s nearing noon – her dads just stepped out for a bite to eat and Merida wasn’t supposed to be in until 3 when her mom got off work.

Poking her small round nose into the room was Belle, one of the brightest girls at the high school. She’d already taken more AP credits than most of the graduated seniors. Her hair rested on her shoulders in two short brunette braids, and she was pale as could be, even in May. The two of them had been in classes together since grade school; Belle’s father, a bumbling, pleasant fellow with a million ideas a day, had volunteered in their classroom when they were girls. He’d helped with the art projects.

“Mind if I come in?” Belle asked sweetly.

“I– no, no! Please,” Rapunzel replied, practically stuttering. She’d wanted to stretch out her arm, an indication of welcome, but of course, the arm lay flat and gangly against her side, where it had the past eight days. It was surreal, how she kept forgetting, kept trying to use the limbs that wouldn’t budge. “Hi there, Belle. How are you?”

“I’m okay. I just, well, I was going to get you flowers, like everyone else,” Belle said, eyeing the teddy-bear, balloon, and general floral explosion that was the back corner of the room, “But I knew that, well, if it was _me_ , I’d want something to read.” She stayed standing, awkwardly hovering near the door, but smiling proudly. She produced an iPod, an old one, no touch screen or anything, and a pair of headphones. “I downloaded some books for you. It’s my old one, don’t worry about it. I’m not even sure you’ll _like–_ ”

“No. Thank you,” Rapunzel smiled lopsidedly, touched. “You didn’t have to do that, Belle. Thank you.”

Belle rushed over to her bedside, setting down the gift and flattening her white skirt with her hands. “And here,” she said, presenting a hand-made, folded printer paper card with blue bubble letters reading _Feel Better, Rapunzel_! on the front. “Some kids from school signed it,” she said shyly.

“Can...can you open it for me?” Rapunzel asked, awkward. But the awkwardness was lost on Belle, who fumbled quickly to show Rapunzel the signatures.

_Keep your chin up, Rapunzel! Love you and sending good vibes._  
_–Tarzan_

_Rapunzel, We believe in you, girl. Stay strong!_  
_Love, Jasmine_

_If you need anything, anything at all, we are here for you. Sending love from Corona High._  
_Hugs, Moana_

_Here’s a quote that I thought might help: “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.” That’s Sylvia Plath. Okay, feel better._  
_– Mulan_

_There is more than one way to ‘reach’ for the stars._  
_Your friend, Belle_

Rapunzel doesn’t know what to say.

“You’re very brave, Rapunzel. I admire that,” Belle says instead, breaking the comfortable silence. She stands the card up on Rapunzel’s bedside table, next to some forms and a prescription pill bottle.

Rapunzel laughed. “I don’t know about that. Tell me – what kind of books are on that thing?” She nodded toward the iPod. The card was too emotionally-charged to address right now. Besides, nodding was her new favorite thing. Now that her neck wasn’t so stiff and bruised anymore, moving her neck, rotating her head, looking from side to side – these were the juiciest luxuries.

“Oh, I gave you a mix. I even put a Nicholas Sparks novel on there for kicks. I wasn’t sure exactly what you want. There’s _Frankenstein_ – always a conversation starter, that one. What does it mean to be human, you know? Of course there’s _Harry Potter_ , a classic, and _The Alchemist_ , which is a really symbolic novel, not super plot-heavy but full of wisdom, and _Tuesdays with Morrie_ , it’s a true story about a man who had Lou Gehrig's. And I put _To Kill A Mockingbird_ on there, too. It’s the summer read for juniors, you know. I’ve already read it four times, of course, but I figure I should read it again just to be sure. Don’t want Mrs. Stafford breathing down my neck when we go back in the fall. I’ve heard junior year is the hardest, and if I really want to get into Princeton...”

“You’ll get into Princeton,” Rapunzel encouraged, letting her head fall back into her nest of pillows. She stared thoughtfully at the ceiling for a second. “Think I could get into Princeton?”

“If you listen to all those books.”

“Belle, can I ask you something serious? Since you’re the smartest person I know.”

“Oh, shush.”

“I’m serious!”

_“Sure.”_

“Do you think I can still go to college? Like this?”

Belle thought about it. Genuinely thought about it. Rapunzel liked that about Belle – she wasn’t the kind of girl to tell you she liked your blouse if she didn’t, or to tell you you had a chance with the star football player when you were captain of the Speech and Debate team. Belle was honest and realistic.

“Rapunzel... honestly? I think you can do just about anything.”

* * * * *

Life in the hospital is somewhere on the border of horrible and miserable. She hates being touched and prodded and bothered by people she doesn’t know. As someone who has always had but a small circle of close friends and only her fathers and the dog to call family, it is disconcerting to be around so many people at once. Doctors and obscure aunts she’d never met before, in-patients and out-patients and nurses and for one incredibly loud day, a construction crew. The fluorscent lights strain Rapunzel’s eyes, which spend much of her time shut as she naps the days away. The view out the window is lovely – full of tree branches and sparrows and blossoms and even a creek far down the path – and she’d love to paint it, but of course she can’t.

A C4 spinal cord injury is no fun. The doctors are constantly flipping her over (they never ask if they can, only tell her when they’ll be doing it) to look at the bruising on her spinal column. There’d been a neck brace for the first few days, and an IV drip gave her morphine for the first two days when the pain and swelling in her neck and uppermost back had been in excruciating pain. Now, of course, there’s no need for the morphine. She can’t actually feel the pain of her own injury, which, perhaps, is a small blessing.

She has been tubed up in the CT scanner several times and also been the lucky recipient of an MRI. They want to know if her brain is okay, where the bleeding is, how the swelling is, what the vertebrates look like. Where is the scar tissue forming? How is the connectivity, if there is any? Much of the language goes over Rapunzel’s head. She just wants to paint. Or dance. Something besides this constant invasion of personal space.

Slowly, the sea of strangers starts to become familiar; she comes to recognize the styrofoam cups of coffee from the hospital cafeteria that seem to be a constant presence in her fathers’ hands (until she reminds them that it would be better for the planet that they use reusable mugs from home – then the “World’s Best Dad” mugs she’d painted for them in kindergarten start to make regular appearances). She knows what the doctors want at different times of the day and which pills do what and when she is supposed to take them. She hears plenty of spiels about shock and trauma, schedules therapy and physiotherapy appointments. Once, she is even wheeled down to the second floor gym space where the doctors set her up on some exercise equipment to test her muscles and the actual movement restrictions on her body. The most Rapunzel can do is shrug. The doctors ask her to move an index finger. Wiggle a toe. Even clench her butt cheeks together. She can do none of these things. It is a difficult thing to repeat: “I can’t. I can’t. No, I still can’t. No, I can’t feel that. Not there either. Nope, still nothing. No, I can’t. No, I can’t.”

She doesn’t like the doctors’ questions very much at all.

* * * * *

_Dear Rapunzel,_

_I’m writing because... because it’s my fault. Of course it’s my fault. Why couldn’t I have listened to you, just once?_

_I keep forgetting that being independent and being selfish aren’t the same thing, Punz. I keep mixing the two up. I’m sorry. I could’ve taken care of this differently. Taken care of you. Taken care of us._

_What if we hadn’t gone to the party? What if, oh I don’t know. We could have done anything. We could have run back to my house and reigned terror on my brothers. We could have made love – you would’ve been nervous, it would have been our first time, but bloody hell, that would’ve been better than this. We could’ve gotten tattoos, or flowers, or gotten lost somewhere..._

_Anything would be better than this._

_I don’t understand how you don’t hate me. Well. I guess I understand how you don’t hate me. It’s because you’re good. You’re pure, Punz, purer than the freshest water from the tallest mountain. You don’t have anything to hide. Of course you don’t hate me. Your heart’s too good for that. Doesn’t have any room for childish, ugly things like hate, does it?_

_But mine isn’t. I hate myself over this every day, Punz. Every. Day. I wish we could do it over. I’d take you for ice cream. I’d take you to the zoo. Coney Island. Brooklyn. Harlem. Queens. Broadway! We could see Wicked, like you always wanted._

_Oh, Punz. Baby. I’d give you my legs. I’d give you my legs in a heartbeat. Take them, Rapunzel. Take everything I have._

_Sometimes, I wish you hadn’t told me about your dreams. Why’d you tell me about your dreams, Punz? They’re my nightmares. You, freeing the ride-elephants in India. You, painting a big fat mural in New York City, near the Highline, for everyone to see. You, swimming in the Dead Sea, afloat. Now I know all the things I’m keeping you from, Punz. But the thing I should’ve kept you from, in the end, was myself._

_And you know what the worst part is? I’m too selfish to even give you this letter. Too selfish to let you know the truth. Because the truth of it – my God, the truth of it, Punz - is that I need you way more than you need me._

_MER_

  
* * * * *

_Week 3_

After fifteen days in the hospital – fifteen long, boring days of watching the hands spin around the clock, watching the flowers meant to lift her spirits wilt at her bedside, watching as other people grabbed and picked and sampled and massaged at her own body, teasingly and endlessly out of reach – Rapunzel was allowed to go home. It was the first day of June.

Her dads had to purchase a chair – a simple one, no bells or whistles (though it did have a few straps to secure her into place). The doctors wanted her to take it slow, adjust to her new and different mobility and its limitations. The chair was all black, but Greg and Jeff knew that wouldn’t do – not for Rapunzel – and so they’d ordered lavender-colored wheels with a quaint flower pattern on them. It suited her, though she felt strange about it. Who wants a wheelchair to ‘suit’ them? Eventually, the doctors had told them, she could be fitted with a Sip-and-Puff wheelchair.

“They’re on the front lines of this stuff, I tell ya. The front lines. I know it don’t feel right, and I know you’ve got a lot to think about, but now’s the best time in all of human history to go through something like this. We’re gonna have you out and about in no time, Miss. The technology for people like you is truly remarkable.”

What she heard was, “There’s no cure. You’re just going to have to wait.”

Her life had become drastically different, and she’d had to get over being embarrassed about her body, its functions and its fluids, very quickly for a sixteen-year-old girl. A female catheter was inserted in her urethra, extending into her bladder to empty her urine. This had to be done nearly every four hours, and was left to drip throughout the night, to Rapunzel’s initial displeasure. It was worse when her bowels had to be emptied. She watched them carry it out of the room in horror, though even that began to feel normal after a few days. Eventually, she would long for it; she would get headaches, horrible migraines and sweats if she wasn’t being taken care of properly. It’s not easy to realize you’ll never go to the bathroom again.

Other functions – things she had taken for granted her entire life – were simply unachievable. She couldn’t cough, blow her nose. Have an itch? She has to ask someone to scratch it. To her surprise, she couldn’t even spit, or sneeze. She could shrug her shoulders, but not lower them – that was left to gravity. Being quadriplegic came with added risks – she was more likely to get a UTI, at higher risk of pneumonia – as if losing feeling and movement in all four of her limbs weren’t enough.

Her dads emptied their (admittedly deep) pockets. Hospital bills. A new, specialized eggshell mattress that helped disperse the pressure so she could avoid bed sores and infection. The chair. She would need psychological consulting and physical therapy. A new car, wheelchair accessible. Ramps for the front door. Ramps for the backdoor. A new kitchen table so that Rapunzel would be able to see over the silverware when she was home.

For the rest of her life, she would have to be exercised formally by a physiotherapist – a type of doctor she had never heard of before. Twice a week, she would be strapped to a tilt table, elevated to a standing position, and stretched. Each joint had to be taken through the full range of motion. She had to bear weight. Stretch. This was, of course, not just for her comfort, but to prevent the onset of osteoporosis and the loss of bone density – yet another frightening disease to which she was now extra susceptible. Great.

She also wasn’t prepared for the constant pins-and-needles burning sensation that coursed endlessly over her entire body. Something about being quadriplegic, some _tiny perk_ , she had supposed once, would be that the body could not feel pain. That at least she would be entirely numb. But that wasn’t actually true. The nerves in her body couldn’t communicate with her spine properly anymore, but pain – pain, she learns, is primarily designed in the brain. A brain wanting to desperately to reconnect with its long-lost lower half. A brain that conjures an endless, nagging, buzzing sensation to remind Rapunzel that it is still in mourning.

Jeff and Greg both take off of work. Jeff is a real estate agent and Greg an established environmental lawyer; not quite 9-to-5 jobs. It’s easy for them to get out of their corporate responsibilities – everyone feels bad for the parents of the kid who gets paralyzed. They think, _at least it’s not me_. They think, _poor guy_. They think, _I don’t know what that family’s gonna do_. And so they let Greg and Jeff go home and face the very reality that always seemed to happen to somebody else.

They’re both caretakers, instantly. They dote on Rapunzel’s every whim, making her all her favorite foods – which she can chew, and happily does, but must be hand-fed like a child. They watch her favorite movies. Rapunzel has made it evidently clear that she has absolutely no desire to leave the house, and they respect that, at least initially. They let her sleep in their bed for a week, which might’ve seemed childish a few weeks ago but now feels wildly appropriate. Fat chance Jeff or Greg is letting Rapunzel out of their sight. They plug in her headphones and click the ‘play’ button so she can listen to the books Belle’s given her. She gets through _The Alchemist_ in a day. The first _Harry Potter_ book in two. But she doesn’t start _To Kill A Mockingbird_. Rapunzel never wants to set foot in her high school again unless she can actually _set foot_ in her high school.

* * * * *

_10 things you’re scared to ask a quadriplegic – Buzzfeed_

Merida closes the site when she gets to “Can quadriplegics still, ya know, get it on?” She pushes her dinner away from herself, appetite gone.

“No cell phones at the table!” her mother says.

Gladly, Merida thinks.

But Merida is a masochist. She combs the internet. She watches videos of quadriplegics doing amazing things. She reads stories about quadriplegics whose caretakers assist them in committing suicide. She writes and writes, filling journals with apologies. _My fault my fault my fault my fault my fault._ She spends all of her free time – too much of it, without soccer practice or chemistry homework to distract – remembering.

Merida remembers one night in particular – about a month into dating, sometime in early February. It was unseasonably warm; Merida’s mother had opened all the windows in the house, and Merida had felt like she could finally breathe. She hummed as she tugged a brush through her difficult hair, coaxing it into an acceptable and presentable shape. Her pale, nimble fingers flitted down, spinning as many strands as humanly possible into a long braid. Satisfied, Merida skipped down the stairwell, braid flying out behind her like the tail of a kite.

“Bye, Mum!” she sing-songed, door already closing behind her so as not to hear the rapt, condescending “ _Merida_ ,” from her mother’s exasperated lips.

She kicked her bike to life – the one her mom still didn’t know about. Her dad, her biggest fan since day one, had gotten the Vespa for her 16th birthday. They kept it in the neighbor’s garage; it was their little secret.

Merida knew she and her father shared the same bones, the same Scottish blood. Adventure was always on their horizon, an itch under their translucent skin. They like the same things. Grit. Speed. The rush of competition. Adrenaline. The brute of physical strength. Merida remembers lifting weights with her father in the living room as a mere six-year-old. They had that unspoken language between them. The moped was an act of solidarity, a scribbled note left on her pillow leading her around the house and out to the bushes where it’d been tucked away. She’d almost cried as she traced the bike – her freedom – with the pads of her fingers in disbelief.

Later, she hugged her father when he came home from work that day. He’d grunted affirmatively as she tucked herself into his big side. They understood each other.

The gift purred satisfactorily beneath her as she followed the now-familiar loops and turns that led to Rapunzel’s doorstep. Rapunzel had already texted her that her dads were out for the night, at dinner with an older lesbian couple they’d met at the courthouse when they finalized their marriage license. Long story short, ‘Punzel was home alone.

Rapunzel, admittedly, was loaded. Her dads had the most beautiful two-story brownstone Merida had ever seen. It was the kind of house that seemed breakable, like a museum. Merida didn’t much like thinking about how much every centerpiece or vase cost. When she would come through the front door, she kept her hands glued to her sides, terrified of breathing on anything.

But that day, Merida didn’t knock on the front door at all. She propped her Vespa against the side of the house, jumped Rapunzel’s fence (widening the holes at the knees of her jeans), and tiptoed around the corner of the house into ‘Punzel’s backyard – where her bedroom window was.

_Thud._

Rapunzel looked up from her computer – she’d been ordering paintbrushes online, waiting for the doorbell to ring, lounging in all-gray loose-fitting sweats, her hair wet and wrapped in a lavender towel. Her eyebrows stitched together, confused.

_Thud._

Rapunzel floated to the window. With a little elbow grease, she propped it open – it was a straight shot down from the second story–

–and there, just a foot below the window pane, was the grinning, sweaty, freckled, victorious face of the most spontaneous and unbelievable girl Rapunzel’d ever laid eyes on. She laughed. Mer had twigs in her hair and a slight scrape on the left side of her chin, dangling in the ivy growing along the southern wall.

“Jeez!” Rapunzel screeched, tugging her girlfriend through the window. She collapsed backward, Merida toppling clumsily on top of Rapunzel. Their chests heaved against each other as they giggled. Rapunzel’s wet hair escaped its towel, thick sopping tendrils between them.

“Oh, I adore you,” Merida laughed on top of Rapunzel, smothering her in kisses, their legs intertwining. Rapunzel kissed her back, passionately, happily, her legs curling around Merida’s waist. She smiled into the kiss. They purred against each other.

Minutes later, they untangled themselves, flushed with hearts racing. Merida looked out at Rapunzel’s room, all but suppressing a nod of approval. Unlike the rest of the house, Rapunzel’s room looked live in. She was an artist, through and through. Her walls were covered in sketches; the floor splattered in paint. She collected plastic water bottles for sculptures, Capri Sun pouches and lost keys and ribbons. There were four dog collars hanging on the door knob. There were photographs of people’s feet taped to her desk. Her bed was unmade, fluffy pillows and a stuffed-animal chameleon lingering in the corner.

And the ceiling was hung with lanterns – all shapes, all sizes. In blues, reds, purples, greens. Each light cast a different-shaped pattern against ‘Punzel’s walls.

Just as Merida was admiring the room and Rapunzel was blushing as she straightened her blouse, a bark came to life on the floor below.

“ _Shit_ ,” Rapunzel muttered, in rare form. Merida quirked a curious eyebrow. “I forgot to feed Pascal,” Rapunzel sighed, throwing open her bedroom door and practically running down the staircase. Merida tailed her, rolling her eyes jovially.

Pascal was a young, smiley golden retriever – a Rapunzel in dog form – with a bright green collar. But he wasn’t barking for food, oh no. He was barking at Greg and Jeff, who stood slyly in the kitchen, arms crossed, facing a wide-eyed and horrified Rapunzel.

“Hello, ladies,” Greg huffed, serious.

“Dad, I–” Rapunzel started.

“Oh, we’re pulling your leg,” laughed Jeff, eyes crinkling at the corners as he unfolded an arm and draped it casually over Greg’s shoulder. Rapunzel looked dumbstruck. “How’re you, Merida?” he asked, equally casual.

“I’m...I’m great,” Merida played along, confused. If Merida’d been caught with a friend over – one she hadn’t got permission to have over beforehand – her mom might’ve lost it. But Rapunzel’s dads just seemed...happy. Happy to see them.

“Dad, Dad, I’m sorry,” Rapunzel whispered, hugging them apologetically.

“Has Pascal been fed?” Jeff asked, and Rapunzel bolted to the pantry for a cup of dog kibble before the last word was even out of his mouth.

“Now he has,” Rapunzel sang guiltily, bare feet slapping against the hardwood.

“You’re home early,” Merida said knowingly. The men laughed.

“Kathy got held up at the doctor’s office. They cancelled the dinner while we were halfway to the restaurant. We grabbed a quick bite at a deli on the way home and made it home – apparently – in the nick of time,” Greg winked at Merida.

“Have you girls had dinner yet?”

“Oh, I’m not hung–” Merida began, but Jeff cut her off.

“Bull! Let’s get you something. Rapunzel, what kind of hostess are you?” Jeff chastised, pulling a pot from the cabinet.

“Well, it’s not _my_ fault! Mer, here–” Rapunzel started, about to disclose Merida’s less-than-traditional entrance. Merida gave a minute shake of her head. Rapunzel caught it out of the corner of her eye. “Well, Mer, she surprised me! We would’ve gotten around to dinner, I swear.”

They bickered on, Rapunzel’s dads poking good-natured fun at her and Merida joined in, amazed at how Rapunzel could spit it right back. They picked at spaghetti, and Pascal panted happily beside Merida, eyes on her dish. At one point, Rapunzel – laughing at something Merida’d said – put her hand on Merida’s knee. She left it there for the rest of dinner.

After dinner, the girls disappeared into Rapunzel’s room with explicit keep-the-door-open instructions from Greg and Jeff, which made the girls giggle and blush all over again. Merida sprawled on Rapunzel’s bed, chin in her palm, as Rapunzel looked dreamily out the window. They talked for hours. Rapunzel sketched Merida, mouth open slack, mid-sentence as usual, eyes alight with her own story. She’s in another world, happily chattering away amidst Rapunzel’s pillows and blankets.

Merida thought a lot about that night these days. About what was the same; what was different.

Rapunzel’s hand never found its way to Merida’s knee. Not anymore. There was no surprising Rapunzel – she didn’t like being caught in bed, immobile. And she didn’t want Merida to see her dads lifting her out of bed and into the chair. Her bedroom was on the first floor now – ‘Punzel’s chair couldn’t get up the stairs. Jeff and Greg had become, if not distraught, grim. Two vases had been broken as Rapunzel and her dads adjusted to the chair and moving around 130 lb of mostly dead weight. No one seemed to care about the shattered glass.

But things were the same, too. Pascal’s wet nose was never far from Rapunzel these days. Jeff and Greg still made spaghetti. The door was always open to Merida. They still chattered for hours, Merida sprawled on the bed, Rapunzel, staring dreamily, at the sky.

* * * * *

It’s Rapunzel’s first stretching session. Her physical therapist is one of the most beautiful women she has ever laid eyes on; she’s slim, with crescent-eyes and bleach-white hair, though it doesn’t look like she bleaches it at all. She’s wearing all white – not quite scrubs, but they look medical, somehow.

“I’m Elsa,” she says in a friendly way, shaking Jeff’s hand. Hers was ice cold. Greg has stayed home with Pascal, the family Golden Retriever, for the afternoon, catching up on work stuff and making a few phone calls.

“Jeff.”

“So nice to meet you. And you must be Rapunzel.” Rapunzel put on a brave face. Come on. Brave face, brave face, brave face.

“Hi” she whispered, small. Her breath sounded shaky, watery.

“It’s going to be alright, love. Do you mind if I take you into the back?”

Jeff and Rapunzel looked at each other. They’d fought over it in the car. Jeff wanted to be there, every step of the way. In every doctor’s appointment, in every meeting, every fitting, every session. But Rapunzel – who had so little control over anything these days – wanted at least this. At least autonomy over her own recovery.

“I’m going to be okay, Dad. I promise.” One side of her mouth turned up at the corner.

“I know, darling. I know you will.” He looked to Elsa. “Take good care of her. They grow up a hell of a lot faster than you want ‘em to.” With that, he squeezed Rapunzel’s shoulder, sat back down in his seat in the waiting room, and picked up a copy of People magazine. Without looking up – feigning casualness – he said, “I’ll be right here if you need anything.”

Elsa wheeled Rapunzel behind the ominous door that separates the waiting room and whatever treacherous funhouse terrors the doctor’s office held. Rapunzel expected to see things out of a medieval torture textbook – racks, Willy-Wonka stretching machines, human car washes and other quadriplegics strapped into Frankenstein chairs.

But she was wheeled into what looked to be a yoga studio – similar to the ones she’d been dreaming about in her sleep every night. Unlike the yoga studios she’d been to before, this one didn’t have mirrors on all sides – something she was grateful for today.

“This is where we’re going to be meeting on Wednesdays and Sundays, okay? What do you think?”

There were little ferns and succulents planted in silver jars in the room. There were windows – high up on the walls, so no one could see in – that let in natural light. God, they’d even lit a vanilla-and-something candle in one of the corners of the room, and beside it was one of those little bubbling brook fountains, coating the room in the soothing sounds of rushing water – something Rapunzel hadn’t heard in weeks. It was so unlike her.

“It’s wonderful.”

“Great,” Elsa smiled wide, her straight teeth showing. Rapunzel liked her instantly. “I’m going to tell you exactly what I’m going to do before I do it, alright? This is your body. And only you have control or say over it. That never changes, you hear me?”

“Yes,” Rapunzel replied. No one had told her that. Not anyone at the hospital. Not her dads. Not even Merida. People had been telling her when to get up, when to empty her catheter, when to eat, what to eat. Picking her up without asking. Pushing her chair without telling her where she was going.

“Now, let me explain to you what we’re doing today...”

 

The session lasted for an hour. Rapunzel felt...oddly comfortable with this stranger, who gently unfurled her and opened her big heart right back up again. She stretched her feet, bent her wrists, pulled her arms up over her head. She asked Rapunzel all kinds of questions. What’s your favorite subject in school ( _art, always art_ ), who’re your friends ( _Merida, Belle, my friend Eugene_ ), if you were stranded on island, what book would you take ( _James and the Giant Peach_ ). But she asked Rapunzel hard questions, too – questions everyone else seemed afraid to ask, afraid if they did she would shatter, like glass, into a million pieces.

“What do you miss most?” Elsa said gently, white-blond ponytail swaying.

“I don’t know yet. I just want...I want to wrap my arms around the people I love. And _God_ I want to paint. Maybe run. That might be it. Forrest-Gump style. Just run and run and run.”

“Your dad told me you had a partner.”

“ _Ugh_ that’s _so_ embarrassing,” Rapunzel confided, wishing she could hide her blush with her hands. “Yeah. I have a girlfriend. Her name’s Merida.”

“Does she know about your diagnosis?”

“Yeah, she was there. When it happened.”

“How’s that going?” She folded Rapunzel’s leg at the knee.

“Fine. I’m really lucky. She’s been supportive. I’m scared that I’ll lean on her too much. I don’t want to scare her away, you know? I’m pretty needy these days.”

“I know you feel that way now, but I bet she doesn’t think of it that way.”

“I just feel like a burden. I can’t...I mean, I can’t be a very good girlfriend. I can’t hold her hand. I can’t hug her, or surprise her, dance with her. Buy her a present. She has to push me around everywhere.”

Elsa looked at her with understanding and set her palm on Rapunzel’s shoulder. “You have a lot going for you, though. You guys can still have long conversations, and share music and books and watch TV. You’re not broken. You still have shoulders for her to cry on, you have a 24 carat smile, you can still hang out and go places. I’m not saying it won’t be hard – trust me – but don’t sell yourself short, girl. You’ve got a lot to offer. Take it from someone who spent a lot of time selling herself short.”

“So what made you want this job?” Rapunzel asked as Elsa continued to contort her, slowly and gently, with tender, knowing hands.

“I hated myself for a long time. I struggled with my weight, my self esteem. I did ugly things to myself, Rapunzel. I locked myself away, out of sight. And when I learned that I wasn’t the only one who’d done that – that I wasn’t alone – I wanted to become a bridge. I wanted to bring the loners, and the self-haters, and the struggling back into the world. We want you here with us.” There was a long pause.

“My _God_ ,” Elsa finally said. “Your dads cannot do hair for their lives. Let me help.” And with that, Elsa had pulled the hair tie from Rapunzel’s haphazard golden braid and twisted her intelligent fingers until she had redone it, smooth and beautiful and so long. She tucked the hair behind Rapunzel’s ear.

“There,” Elsa smirked, satisfied.

 

“She was great. I really look forward to having you both back again. Thanks so much for coming in today,” Elsa said, wheeling Rapunzel back out into the waiting room where Jeff was dawdling– Rapunzel noticed that he was still on the same page of the magazine he’d been on when she left, reading and rereading the same lines.

“That’s great to hear. I’m proud of you, ‘Punzel,” he beamed, standing up to shake Elsa’s hand again. Still cold as ice.

“She’s been incredibly brave. Next time, I’ll show you some of the exercises you can do at home.” With that Elsa, nodded, satisfied, and disappeared into the back again.

Jeff moved to the counter to pay and set up Rapunzel’s next appointment. As he talked with the receptionist, Rapunzel caught sight of another girl – about her age, and also in a wheelchair, though she was wheeling herself with a joystick she controlled with her right hand. She had deep red hair – not orange and fiery, like Merida’s, but red red, like blood. She was pretty, undeniably so, with a purple crop top and a long, shimmery green skirt. A seashell necklace rested against her chest.

“Hellllllllo, Tom! I’m here for my 2:00!” the girl hollered, rolling between Rapunzel and her father and into the back.

“Good to see you, Ariel,” the receptionist called back, pushing his turtle glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“She seems nice,” Jeff whispered as an aside, so only Rapunzel could hear. “Maybe you could talk to her sometime. Make friends.” Rapunzel rolled her eyes – the only appropriate response when your _dad_ suggests you make a new friend. But she tucked the idea away for later, and watched as the Ariel girl wheeled herself down the hallway until the door shut and obscured her view.

* * * * *

_Week 4_

Merida’s sitting on Rapunzel’s couch, beside her. There’s an awkward and obvious space between them. Merida still hasn’t really touched Rapunzel since the accident. The TV’s on, and Guy Fieri is blabbering about something deep-fried, but neither girl is paying it much attention.

Rapunzel’s grown quieter. She still rants, sometimes, about Donald Trump’s campaign or how intersectional feminism is the only valid form of feminism or how the dog keeps trying to play with the wheels of the chair. But at the end of the day, the number of words she was contributing to the conversation was diminishing. She wasn’t interested in getting out of bed much. Her hair was greasy, limp. She developed bags under her eyes even though she was sleeping more than she ever had before.

“I’ve thought about it, you know,” Rapunzel whispered, almost inaudible. She stared straight at the TV, unseeing.

“About what?” Merida looked at her quizzically, but Rapunzel’s gaze didn’t waver.

“Suicide. The doctors said a lot of people like me think about it. They’re making me go to therapy. People like me say life gets kind of meaningless.”

“Oh, Rapunzel.”

Merida scooted closer, their thighs pressing together, even if Rapunzel couldn’t feel it. Yet somehow, just seeing their bodies touching in her peripheral vision sent her neurons off – the dopamine pumping through her brain was palpable. Merida grabbed Rapunzel’s left hand in her right, lacing each finger into place. She laid her cheek on Rapunzel’s shoulder, a few quiet tears escaping her eyes and bleeding onto Rapunzel’s sweatshirt.

“And you know what I realized? Not only can I not do anything, but I can’t even kill myself without someone else’s help. I’m that useless.”

“‘Punz,” Merida whispered, unable to get anything out besides her name. She wanted to convey so much in that one word. There was so much weight in it. Rapunzel. Rapunzel. The worth of the person sat in the word itself, the beautiful name tasting sweet, like lavender on her tongue. Like always. Like home.

“I know, Mer. I know,” Rapunzel turned her head and kissed Merida lightly on the temple. Merida cries against her. Rapunzel can’t feel Merida’s body shaking against her, but she can see her shoulders. Rapunzel starts to cry too.

“I thought you were afraid to touch me, Mer. I thought you were done. I know I look sickly, now – and my muscles are all–”

“Absolutely not. No. I– oh, ‘Punzel. I didn’t touch you because it...it didn’t seem fair. I didn’t know if it was fair that I get to feel, to touch, to move, and you don’t get anything out of it at all. It’s not right. If we hold hands, or if I brush against your leg...I want us both to feel the electricity, the connection. Not just me.”

Rapunzel’s touched. But Merida has had it all wrong. “Snuggle me?” she pleads, worrying her bottom lip. She’s really crying now, tears pouring over the brim of her eyelids. It’s a quiet kind of sob, with her sharp, stuttered intakes of breath puncturing the silence.

So Merida does. She moves slow and deliberate, curling herself around the limp but warm limbs of her girlfriend. She weaves her socked feet and unshaved legs between Rapunzel’s, toes pressing against Rapunzel’s depleting calves. One arm sneaks behind Rapunzel’s back and is pressed into the warm leather of the couch, and the other arm wraps around Rapunzel’s stomach, hands folding together on the other side of Rapunzel. Merida snuggled her head against Rapunzel’s side, catlike and desperately, desperately needing attention, and love, and reassurance, and warmth. Rapunzel closes her eyes, an almost-smile on her lips. Merida can feel the rise and fall of Rapunzel’s chest. It is the most precious rhythm in the whole world.

“Thanks, ‘Punz,” Merida mutters into Rapunzel’s sweatshirt. She hiccups.

“What for?”

“Bein’ you.”

* * * * *

Merida had thought _why me?_ several times in her life. When her mother announced that she was pregnant with triplets. When she realized for the first time that she was gay and there was nothing she could do about it. When her mother reminded her for the umpteenth time to sit like a lady.

For the first time, though, Merida thought, _“Why not me?”_

And that was the first time Merida knew – really knew – what it meant to be in love.

She replayed the scene in her head over and over, wishing more than anything that the wave had broken over _her_ head instead. Wishing she were the one in the chair. Wishing and wishing. It was a wonder the world hadn’t run out of pennies.

* * * * *

Rapunzel looked sickly. Sickly and moody. Her smile was a ghost and her eyes were haunted. She wasn’t making much eye contact these days and her voice was gravelly with misuse. She was re-watching Bob Ross videos in front of the TV for hours on end, her dads popping in periodically to feed her, give her her anti-inflammatory meds and painkillers and empty her colostomy bag. She hadn’t hummed in a long time. Who knew you could lose so much weight without lifting a finger?

Merida’s mom dropped her off at Rapunzel’s in the early afternoon. Not even Merida’s presence could break through Rapunzel’s raincloud.

“Want me to feed you?”

“Not hungry.”

“Need anything?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Wanna talk about anything?”

“I feel like we’ve talked about everything, Mer,” she sighed.

Merida shifted, uncomfortable. This wasn’t her Rapunzel.

“When’s the last time you saw the sun?” Merida snapped, irritated.

“What?”

“When’s. The last time. You saw the sun?” she drawled, dramatic.

“Dunno – Mer, what is it?”

“Yer comin’ with me,” Merida smirked, an evil glint in her eye.

“No– I’m not in the mood – _Merida_!”

But Merida wasn’t listening as she wheeled Rapunzel away from Bob Ross’ admittedly soothing voice. Rapunzel protested, but lost energy quickly, succumbing to whatever Merida had planned. She was too tired to put up much of a fight.

Sunglasses were placed on Rapunzel’s head, and then a baseball cap – faded violet with a big golden sunshine in the middle of it. Her dads had picked it out for her two years ago, a small reference to singing _You Are My Sunshine_ to her as a baby, and her sunshine-themed nursery. Merida hung her portable speaker on one of the wheelchair’s handles, and Simon  & Garfunkel started belting out of it. Merida sang along, loudly and off-key, as she thrusted Rapunzel out the front door.

“Ceceeeeelia, you’re breaking my heart, you’re shaking my confidence dailyyyy.”

Rapunzel rolled down the sidewalk, the sun glinting red off of her John Lennon sunglasses. Robins flitted about and sparrows dived across the street from the rooftops to the bushes. The sky was blue as ever without a single cloud in sight; she could feel the sun on her skin, warming her face as fresh air rushed by.

Merida pushed and pushed, not saying a word – not even to gloat about being right as Rapunzel’s mood visibly improved. She held her chin higher. She held her shoulders up a little stiffer. Her dimples almost made an appearance.

Mer pushes her all the way to Starbucks. Rapunzel almost laughs when she realizes where Merida is taking them.

“Hey, it’s Merida!” the barista says, excited. “We’ve missed you on Wednesdays! Hi, Rapunzel.” Rapunzel tries not to notice the momentary balk of the cashier, realizing Rapunzel wasn’t skipping as usual but was now in her chair.

“The usuals?”

“Make the Dirty Chai iced today, would ya? We’re going outside. Please.”

“As you wish.”

The passion tea and iced dirty chai arrived with a wink from the barista.

“Drink,” Merida ordered, presenting the straw of her venti to Rapunzel.

“You’re terrifying, you know that?” Rapunzel replied. But she did as she was told. She could feel the sugar hit her veins as her tastebuds lit up.

“That’s what I thought,” Merida beamed, eyebrows raised.

With a wave to the friendly barista, Merida wheeled Rapunzel out of the coffee shop ad back onto the sidewalk. The wheelchair bumped with every crack in the concrete.

“Step on a crack, break your mum’s back,” Merida recited.

“Good thing I haven’t got any of those,” Rapunzel riffed. Then, a pause. “So...you’re not embarrassed by me?” she asked, realizing it’s the first time they’ve been seen in public since the accident.

Merida laughs, not meaning to. The concept is just so foreign to her – be embarrassed? Of _Rapunzel_? – that it escapes her lips before she has the chance to stop it. Rapunzel frowns, but Merida composes herself and says, “Sorry, sorry ‘Punz, that’s just, it’s the most ridiculous concept. Calling you mine – in a healthy, non-possessive way, of course – is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Goof.” Merida kisses her forehead, then, tentatively, her lips. They’re stopped on the sidewalk next to a small road; cars go by and by. One even honks, to which Merida throws up a middle finger and continues to kiss her girlfriend.

“You taste yummy,” Rapunzel smiles, chai and peppermint gum on her lips. “Come back.”

Merida’s not one to deny Rapunzel anything. And it’s the first interest Rapunzel’s taken in kissing since the accident, which Merida notes and tucks away to think on later. She shoves away the string of _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_ that’s going off in her head. The guilty voice in her head is familiar; the fact that the beach party was her idea is never far from her conscious. But today is about Rapunzel.

Merida eventually breaks the kiss, loving the blush that coats Rapunzel’s cheeks. A blush that can’t just be from the sunshine. She loves it so much, heat ripples through her entire body. She pushes Rapunzel again, not stopping until the chair is parked in a patch of grass next to a pond in the neighborhood adjacent to Rapunzel’s. A pair of mallards swim happily past. A healthy stream of Vitamin D shines down on them. They’re sweating pleasantly, basking, Rapunzel in her chair, Merida cross-legged in the cool grass, stretching up occasionally to give Rapunzel a sip of her iced tea. The ice has melted. Simon and Garfunkel sing the same six songs over and over in the background.

“You know me too well,” Rapunzel says, breaking the silence as a crane floats down gracefully into the pond.

“What else are girlfriends for?” Merida quips, soaking in the moment.

It becomes a Wednesday tradition. Starbucks and then getting wheeled somewhere in nature, where the sun shines.

Rapunzel’s therapist says that fresh air and routine are good for her. She really couldn’t agree more.

* * * * *

“When I imagined graduating, I always thought it’d be with a cap and gown. Not like this,” Rapunzel sighed, as Jeff and Greg drove her to the hospital. “This feels less thrilling and more like getting hit in the face with a frying pan.”

“Feeling melodramatic today, are we?” Jeff teased from the front seat.

“I’m serious! Most girls my age are thinking about sex and drugs and _prom_ –”

“Rapunzel, you’ve _never_ liked any of those things,” Greg chimed in.

“Well, I _could’ve_!” Rapunzel harped.

“Honey, this _is_ an important graduation – milestone – whatever you want to call it. This chair is going to change your life. No, I’m serious. ‘Punzel, these chairs, this technology, it’s going to give you so much freedom. You’ve only been home for a week and I can already tell you’re going stir-crazy. Think of it as your liberation” Jeff said.

“Liberation,” Rapunzel scoffed, scrunching her nose in disgust. A long strand of golden hair fell in her face – she huffed and blew it out of her way.

 

The automatic doors cranked open after the family crossed the parking lot, and a knot twisted itself in Rapunzel’s stomach. Visits like these would become regular, normal, but they were still fresh to Rapunzel, who was not yet used to the sterile smell, the light blue scrubs that all the nurses wore, the overly-friendly staff who only keep up their cheery attitudes because they know that kids are dying in this children’s hospital and they’ve got no place being grumpy. There are cartoons and superheroes painted on the walls, and a shepherd – probably a therapy dog – trots past, panting happily with her ears perked up.

They took the elevator up to the third floor, where Rapunzel was to be seen by Dr. White, her primary care physician since the incident. Dr. White had short black hair and bright red lips.

It was funny, the things you started to notice when you became a quadriplegic, Rapunzel thought. Well, maybe funny wasn’t quite the right word. But she’d started noticing which buildings had ramps, elevators. Whether or not the ‘handicapped’ symbol was the traditional, stationary one or the progressive, in-motion one. Where people stared and where they didn’t. Whether people called her disabled or differently-abled or didn’t say anything at all. It was becoming shockingly apparent how many people had only heard the word ‘handicapped’ on the golf course, her fathers included. Huh. That was rather distasteful, wasn’t it?

Dr. White was good about that, at least. She was good about talking about disability and spinal cord injuries and speaking realistically but sympathetically about paralysis. As she should be – it was her job, after all. She chose her words carefully and always meant what she said. She was in the SCI ward all day every day.

Rapunzel couldn’t decide if it was upsetting or comforting to know that the hospital had an entire wing dedicated to people like her.

A nurse came into the room first, to take Rapunzel’s vitals. He was a heavyset man with a thick neck and kind eyes. He took her blood pressure, looked in her ears, at her eyes. They wheeled her chair onto the scale and subtracted the chair’s weight.

“Big day today, huh?” he said gruffly, pressing his hands along Rapunzel’s arms, feeling out her muscles. Again, she could not feel the pressure.

“Mmm,” she agreed.

“Yer not nervous, are ya?” he smiled, eyes crinkling.

“Only a little,” she said softly.

“Rapunzel here’s a trooper,” Jeff said, sitting in the available seat next to the counter and the jar of cotton swabs and wooden sticks. “She’s gonna be flying around in that chair in no time.”

“I believe it. Well, let’s get this show on the road, then! We’re just gonna have to take a few follow-up X-rays to see how the swelling on your spinal column is, and then we’ll see about fixing you up in that chair and trying out some of its features.”

 

Taking X-rays is uncomfortable for anyone – the awkward positions, the thick radiation bib that never quite feels protective enough, the way everyone gets cleared out of the room. It’s ten times as awkward when you can’t move on your own. Rapunzel gets frustrated and blushes deep red as her dads help move her from her wheelchair onto the papered doctor’s chair in the middle of the room, turning her on her sides to achieve different angles on the X-ray machine. The whole thing feels incredibly invasive. Rapunzel doesn’t much want anyone looking at pictures of her, let alone her janky spine.

That might be the worst of it all, she reflects. Having to be picked up like a child.

When he’s done, the nurse technician leaves the room with the usual, “The doctor’ll be in in a minute,” and closes the door behind himself. They wait. The chair Rapunzel’s in has been redeemably cranked into a sitting position and Rapunzel’s waist and chest have been strapped in, so at least she’s sitting up. It’s amazing what a change in position can do for her autonomy and her ability to feel in control. Rapunzel has taken a strong dislike to being horizontal at all; sometimes in the night, when she’s laying down and realizes she can’t get herself back up, she has panic attacks.

She thinks of what Elsa has been teaching her during their sessions.

_“It’s your body, Rapunzel. Being a quadriplegic doesn’t change that. You might need a little more help, some assistance here and there, but that doesn’t mean that anyone has the right to touch you without your permission, you hear me? They move your legs when you want them moved. They stretch you when you want to be stretched. They turn you over when you ask for it. And they always ask permission, Rapunzel. No one lays a hand on you without your permission.”_

Sitting up makes Rapunzel feel like a person. Like it’s just another doctor’s visit.

 

Dr. White breezes into the room a few minutes later, some kind of specialized medical tablet in hand that looks fancy. She asks Rapunzel and her dads the usual questions – how they’re doing, if there’s been any problems. As they answer, she jots things down on the tablet. Rapunzel wishes she could know what Dr. White is writing down. Then she starts asking the special questions. How’s the bathing going? Does she have any pressure sores? How often have they been emptying her bladder? Has there been any swelling? Has she been eating? How’s chewing? Is there any pain? The questions drag on. Eventually, Rapunzel will be used to the gauntlet of inquiries doctors throw at her. Eventually, she’ll have the list of questions practically memorized. But today, her first check-up visit since being discharged from the hospital a week ago, each one takes a moment of hesitation. What _has_ she been eating? _Is_ there any pain? Does it count if the only swollen organ these days seems to be her heart?

They get through the questions. Now Dr. White is bending her at the knees, at the arms. Asking her if she feels anything, anything at all. Each “No” is a needle under her dads’ fingernails. _No. No. No._

“The results from the X-ray show that the C4 injury, while incomplete, is probably going to be permanent,” Dr. White says casually. News she has delivered a hundred times before. “That said, it’s exciting to say that this spinal cord injury is incomplete, rather than complete. You know what that means? The ability of your spinal column to send and receive messages from your brain – although severed – is not completely lost. Some sensation below your C4 vertebrae may come and go, although it looks as though yours has not thus far. As the swelling continues to go down, we may see a possibility of some feeling and even movement to return to parts of your lower body. That said, I don’t want to get your hopes up, Rapunzel. It’s very possible that an incomplete SCI still paralyzes you from the neck down for life,” she finished, matter-of-fact.

Rapunzel appreciated the honesty. Dr. White finished up, and then looked tenderly at Rapunzel. “Do you have any questions?”

“Yes,” Rapunzel said, taking a deep breath that almost passes for not shaking. Almost. “How do I move around in this body, then?”

“I’m glad you asked.”

 

Rapunzel is wheeled into another room, though this time she is alone with Dr. White. Her dads have stayed in the original room, where their stuff is. The doctor whistles as she pushes her.

Dr. White, her scrubs covered in happy-go-lucky woodland creatures, turns on the light and shows Rapunzel the wheelchair that she and her fathers had ordered during her initial stay in the hospital. It was one sliver of the many pamphlets and brochures that had been sprung on them in those traumatic first few days. Just one checked box in a long to-do list.

“This is your Sip-and-Puff wheelchair,” Dr. White announced, arm outstretched to introduce Rapunzel to what would be her new chair. “This chair is going to change your life, Rapunzel. I’m so excited for you. Here, let me show you how it works.”

It took a good few minutes to transfer Rapunzel from one chair to the other. That was Rapunzel’s least favorite thing – being transported. Picked up, like a baby or a misbehaving Yorkshire terrier. But Dr. White is strong (Rapunzel thinks idly of the many paralyzed patients she must pick up in a day) and soon, Rapunzel is seated in the chair.

Dr. White goes about showing Rapunzel how the chair works. She tells her that it’s the same kind of chair that Stephen Hawking uses, which confuses Rapunzel – is that supposed to make her excited to use it for the rest of her life? Either way, Dr. White adjusts the straw, which is thin and connects to an earpiece that is placed on Rapunzel’s ear beneath her curtain of silky blond hair. It almost looks like a headphone, like Rapunzel is about to deliver the best damn radio broadcast the world has ever seen. When the straw is in position, Dr. White helps her calibrate it. Not all Sip-and-Puff technology is the same; it must account for individual lung capacity.  
  
“Alright, give me a hard suck in. Ready, 1… 2. . . 3!” Rapunzel sucks as told. They repeat this – the straw has four main entries: a hard sip, a hard puff, a soft sip, and a soft puff. The sips, of course, are inhales and the puffs are exhales. It almost makes Rapunzel feel like she is back in a hot yoga class: breathe in, breathe out.

The chair and the straw are, admittedly, pretty cool, though Rapunzel won’t be admitting that to her fathers after she spent so much time complaining on the drive in. The straw, first and foremost, controls her now motorized wheelchair (though she’ll miss the lavender wheels on her old one). Dr. White teaches her how to operate it: an initial hard puff makes the wheelchair start to move forward, and a hard sip will stop the chair. However, if the chair is stopped, a hard sip will then make the chair move backwards and a hard puff will make it stop. A continuous soft sip or soft puff will move the wheelchair left or right respectively for the duration of the breath. It’s a lot to remember, and Rapunzel moves forward a few times when she’d intended to move backward, and vice versa, but the important thing is that this is something she can do. Something she will learn. Something she can practice and master.

The good news keeps on coming, though; the same straw that controls her wheelchair can also, apparently, work like a joystick and help her operate a computer or tablet. This is a real game-changer. It’s the kind of technology that will let her make phone calls, or read, or send a text to Merida. The technology that will enable her to take standardized tests and get the news and even dictate an essay. Dr. White provides a few more pamphlets (oh joy) on the recommended computer accessibility software to download and how to operate it. Rapunzel has butterflies. It feels like her personhood has been restored in the two short hours since she arrived at the hospital.

“Let’s show your dads what you’ve learned,” Dr. White grins, and Rapunzel grins back. Sure, she feels like a little kid whose teacher has just told her to show her dads what she made at school today, but it doesn’t matter. Rapunzel can fucking move again. The sun has peeked out from behind the clouds.

“Dad, Dad!” Rapunzel hollers as she emerges from the room where the wheelchair had been stowed and waiting for her. Turning, Greg and Jeff pop out of the first office, startled and with worry in their eyes – there is always worry in their eyes these days – but the worry quickly morphs into joy as they see Rapunzel rolling down the hallway toward them, Dr. White still meters behind, leaning casually in the doorway from where Rapunzel has just departed.

“No friggin’ way,” Jeff smiled, his tired eyes lighting up.

“Look at you go, Rapunzel!” Greg cheered, illuminated. The family hugged as Dr. White slunk out of the background, leaving them to their moment. When her dads pulled away, they left tear stains on her blouse.

* * * * *

“Rapunzel! Rapunzel, you have to watch this video!” Merida said excitedly, turning her phone sideways and shoving it in Rapunzel’s face gracefully.

“What is it?” she replied, blinking to focus on the bright phone screen that was inches from her nose.

“It’s this guy – here, look – it’s this guy, and he’s quad – it’s called mouth-painting.”

“Are you trying to make out with me?”

“No – well, yes, always – but no! No, look. Mouth-painting. You hold the paintbrush in your teeth. Like this.” Merida looked around, grabbed the nearest paintbrush, and bit the brush between her teeth, then pulled it out again to speak, “And you just kind of wave it around. It’ll take practice, of course, but I think it’s a cool idea! Other quadriplegics do it. They make really beautiful paintings, ‘Punz. I bet you could do it too.”

“Let’s see,” Rapunzel replied skeptically. Merida pressed play.

* * * * *

_Week 5_

Rapunzel thought that her fathers’ idea of making Pascal a service dog was silly and demeaning. “I can get around just fine,” she’d argued, maneuvering about the kitchen as if to prove her point.  
“Punz,” Jeff had said softly, big hand on her shoulder – Rapunzel craved physical touch – “Your father and I would feel better if you weren’t going out into this world alone. Pascal’s a good boy. He’ll make a good sidekick.”  
“Sidekick?!” Rapunzel responded, angry. She felt so unlike herself. “You literally think a dog could take better care of me than I can.”  
“Punz–” Jeff sighed, pleaded. Greg remained quiet.  
“I just want him to be a normal dog. A dog that eats and sleeps and poops and is stupid like a dog should be. A stupid, normal dog. I want us to be normal.” The worst part of being in the chair, she thinks now, is her inability to storm off when necessary. There’s only some much dramatic effect a hard puff into her straw can provide. But she didn’t speak to her fathers for the rest of the evening, even when they carried her from the chair to the bed and brushed her teeth for her.  
That night, she’d texted Merida about her frustrations, using the straw to send a message. She was getting better at it, but it still took her a long time to move the joystick and puff for each letter.

From: Punz <3  
8:52 pm  
I’m sick of it

From: Punz <3  
8:57 pm  
I’m sick of this chair, I’m sick of everything

From: ~Lady Merida~  
8:54 pm  
There are worse chairs to be in. I’ll prove it. I’m coming over.

Merida looked at Rapunzel empathetically as she sank into the couch, pushing a disc of _Sweeney Todd_ into the DVD player and kissing Rapunzel gently on her hairline.

* * * * *

It’s nearing the end of June, and Rapunzel’d been begging for two weeks, practically since the day she came out of the hospital. Merida is reserved. She’s not sure it can be done, but the last thing she wants – especially these days – is to disappoint Rapunzel. Rapunzel, who can’t survive more disappointment, frankly.

That doesn’t make it any easier to work out the logistics of getting her beautiful, quadriplegic girlfriend from Newark Station to the Big City, navigating the streets amidst the chaos and celebration, the flags and the cheers and the music...not to mention the entire process of convincing both sets of parents that they can navigate to and from Manhattan all on their own.

“ _Pleaaaaaase_. I’ve never been to a Pride Parade, Mer. This is important to me. My dads finally got married in Jersey only last year. I’ve watched them face prejudice my whole life. I remember my friend Aurora – you know, that girl who always sleeps in Mr. Dolan’s second hour – couldn’t play at my house in the third grade because of my dads. None of my grandparents will speak to me because they’ve all disowned my fathers.

“I love you, Mer. I love you so much, and I hate that people are still trying to silence that love. And you love me–” Rapunzel gulped, but soldiered on, “–you love me even though my body doesn’t - doesn’t know how to be a body. Love is love, Merida. And we should be in New York City this weekend. We are here, and we are queer, and we aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

 

Merida caved. Of course she did. On the morning of, she helped Rapunzel apply temporary tattoos – a rainbow flag on one cheek and a NOH8 campaign logo on the other – at a ripe and ungodly 5 am in preparation for the day’s festivities. Merida got permission to drive Jeff’s new car – the 2016 MV-1 – wheelchair accessible, even had the embarrassing handicap symbol dangling humiliatingly above the dashboard from the rearview mirror. Or so Rapunzel thought. Merida never seemed to mind dragging Rapunzel around. In fact, reflected Rapunzel sleepily from the back of the van, it seemed like Merida was...was pretty proud, actually. Even shining.

Merida parked (horribly and newly licensed) at the Newark Penn Station and involved herself in the timely process it took to get Rapunzel out of the van. Guilt curled like a snake in Rapunzel’s stomach as the machine hummed to lower her down – perhaps the Pride Parade had been a mistake, this was too difficult and dangerous and they were just two girls navigating the country’s biggest city and one of them couldn’t move let alone walk...

Merida recognized it in Rapunzel’s face right away. “None of that,” she snapped. “I’m thrilled to be here with you. You– oh, what’s the phrase?” she paused, revealing her Scottish heritage. “You rock my socks? Whatever!” She stopped as a smile tugged at the corners of Rapunzel’s mouth. “You’re perfect and you’re strong and I’m in love with you and it’s time to pay homage to the gay men and women and gender nonbinary folk who came before us to make our love possible.”

At that, Rapunzel grinned mischievously.

“Let’s go be gay as fuck.”

* * * * *

Pride is nothing short of wonderful. Rapunzel has never seen so many rainbows in her life. There are people in rainbow overalls and rainbow bathing suits and rainbow T-shirts. There are signs -- huge signs, hilarious signs, clever signs, activist signs. BLACK QUEER LIVES MATTER. BI PEOPLE ARE VALID. LOVE COMES IN ALL COLORS. LOVE IS LOVE. One that makes Merida snort is a picture of Jesus with a speech bubble that reads, “Guys, I said I hate figs.” DING DONG DOMA’S DEAD. BORN THIS WAY. I LOVE MY DAUGHTER AND HER WIFE. THIS RABBI SAYS: LOVE WINS. I GET MORE PUSSY THAN YOU. “I DO” SUPPORT MARRIAGE EQUALITY. THIS IS FOR ORLANDO. DON’T MESS WITH DUMBLEDORE, FAM. BINARIES ARE FOR COMPUTERS. I AM PROUD TO BE TRANSGENDER. STRAIGHT OUTTA THE CLOSET.

Rapunzel can’t tear her eyes away.

It’s amazing. There is music and dancing, water bottles on every corner and so many beads. She doesn’t see very many other people in wheelchairs, but people are accommodating. They move out of her way. They smile at her. One friendly young queer man even pauses to dance with Rapunzel -- well, dance in front of her while they made eye contact and sang the lyrics to the same Lady Gaga song. It counted.

Another person – an older older queer woman at the parade – had a candy pink polaroid camera, one of the cheap ones from Urban. She had clipped white hair and Hollywood sunglasses and a white T-shirt that said “Still Here, Still Queer” in all rainbow lettering.

“Girls!!! Get together, get together!” She cheered, picking them out of the crowd, the two girls who couldn’t stop smiling at each other. Merida, realizing what the old lady wanted, pulled Rapunzel’s chair back and close to her body, close enough that she could lean down and plant a big fat kiss on her flushed cheek.

The old woman captured a photograph of the girls, Merida ecstatically planting a sloppy, sweaty kiss on Rapunzel’s cheek in the thick of sticky New York summer. They’re surrounded by a halo of hand-written posters, rainbow flags, giant puppets and colors, colors. ‘Punzel’s nose is scrunched up and her eyes are closed tight as she tilts her head happily into the kiss. Her mouth is open, slack, mid-laugh.

Merida rolled a piece of tape and stuck it on the back. The Polaroid, dated 6/25/16 in Merida’s blocky handwriting, stuck on the wall next to Rapunzel’s cheesy John Lennon quote (“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted”) cut out of a Time Magazine and the dreamcatcher her dads bought her at Disneyland when she was nine. And she looked at it every single night. 

* * * * *

Eugene is the only one who will make fun of her. Rapunzel adores him for it.

She’s known Eugene forever, it seems; remembers climbing the Red Oak tree in his mom’s front yard in kindergarten. Eugene, funnily enough, was her first kiss. They used to play together every day when they were kids; next-door neighbors, in fact, who explored invisible worlds and fought ogres and trolls and collected leaves and stones and stomped around the woods behind the old schoolhouse.

Eugene, in the seventh grade, moved to live with his mom, which put him just outside of town and sent him to Rapunzel’s rival high school. Eugene, no doubt, is a bit of a troublemaker. Rapunzel may be immobile, but it doesn’t mean she can’t still roll her eyes at some of Eugene’s stunts; his memorable ride down his school’s hallway on a motorcycle – captured immediately on Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Vine – always manages to curl her lips into a smile at the sheer ridiculousness of it. Still, there’s no denying the kid, with his floppy brown hair and big brown eyes and thick eyebrows, is kind of brilliant. Rapunzel knows he’ll get into a great school – he’s been dreaming of MIT since he learned the alphabet. His eyes have been set on it since their sixth grade class field trip to Boston. She knows in her bones that he’ll be an engineer someday. He’s good with his hands and has been building robots and circuits since he was young. In fact, Eugene’s the one who hung the lanterns up in Rapunzel’s room – old room, she thinks, tongue going sour.

Naturally, the two of them grew apart when Eugene moved away and transferred school districts. But it didn’t matter so much – he was the kind of friend that you don’t have to see very often to instantly pick up where you left off.

He goes by Flynn now – something about _Eugene is so embarrassing_ and _‘Punz how am I ever going to get a girl to go on a date with me with a name like Eugene?_

But Rapunzel knows him as Eugene and always will.

Although it takes him a few weeks to catch wind of Rapunzel’s injury, he doesn’t hesitate to come to her aid.

“Rapunzel! Your hair is a mess,” he laughs the first time he knocks on the door. Jeff and Greg tense, pupils shrinking, eyes rotating to where Rapunzel sits, afraid she will collapse into her own broken fragility.

But a sunrise of a smile is breaking out on Rapunzel’s face. “Then why don’t you brush it for me, mister,” she shoots back.

To her surprise, he does. He wheels her into her bedroom ( _“Tsk tsk, Rapunzel. I worked so hard on those lanterns and you had to go and switch bedrooms, didn’t ya?”_ ) and picks around for her hairbrush. He sits on the bed, so impressed with her special mattress that he gives it a few good butt bounces, and then pulls her chair toward him.

“Jeff and Greg falling short on the hair game, huh?” he asks, pulling a few locks of hair toward him and working the hairbrush through them, starting at the bottom of the hair and working his way up gently.

“They’re hopeless,” Rapunzel says, and Eugene can hear the smile in her face even though he can’t see it with her facing away from him. “You’d think two gay men would at least be able to wash the conditioner out of my hair, but here we are!” It feels good to be exasperated by things that have nothing to do with her spinal cord.

“To be fair, ‘Punz, you have a _lot_ of hair.” He brushes all of the knots out of Rapunzel’s hair. At her request, he opens her bedroom window, letting the noonday sun breathe into her bedroom. The brushing feels good – except every once in awhile, when Eugene carelessly tugs at a particular difficult knot. It feels good to be touched.

“Who’s the girl in this photo?” Eugene asks after a few beats of comfortable silence, jerking his head toward the polaroid from the NYC Pride without ever pulling his strong hands away from Rapunzel’s hair.

“That’s Merida, my girlfriend,” Rapunzel answers, all smiles now. “I think you’d like her. She’s Scottish – like from Scotland – and she’s got the thickest accent and the biggest dimples. She plays soccer at Corona, actually.” Eugene can feel the pride radiating off of Rapunzel in waves.

“Ooooooooh. She’s cute, ‘Punz.”

“I know.”

“She treats you right?”

“Eugene!” Rapunzel scolds, and finding herself unable to slap him or hit him with anything, drops her head back into his lap, _hard_.

“OW!”

“You deserve it,” Rapunzel sing-songs, laughing. “Merida is the best. She treats me like...like...a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

“At the end of a _rainbow_ ,” Eugene jokes, winking.

He gets another pounding from the back of Rapunzel’s head.

“And now I have confirmation that you are, in fact, thick-skulled,” Eugene teased, rubbing over the sore spot on his legs.

“I think you’d like her.”

 

Eugene does eventually get the chance to meet Merida, who drives her moped over to Rapunzel’s later that afternoon, once she’s done refereeing her little brothers’ soccer game. She’s absolutely drenched in sweat and looks like a zebra in her striped jersey.

The doorbell rings. Jeff and Greg have both gone to work knowing that Eugene would be spending the day at the house, so Eugene answers the door with Rapunzel in tow.

“Woah. What’s black and white and red all over?” he snorts, opening the door with a big meaty hand.

Merida’s eyes roll back into next century.

Merida does not like Eugene. Not one bit. And _no_ , it has nothing to do with the fact that he was Rapunzel’s first kiss. Even if that was in the fourth grade. Whatever.

Eugene’s only redeeming quality – well, aside from the fact that he has such a laughably embarrassing name that Merida manages to fit into every sentence she addresses to him – is that he can make Rapunzel laugh. Merida can make Rapunzel laugh, it’s true – the girls almost always have a good time together – but Eugene is funny. He’s the human incarnation of Cards Against Humanity. And if he keeps Rapunzel laughing for an afternoon, Merida will tolerate him.

“‘Punz,” he says (Merida glares at the use of her nickname), “You didn’t tell me you were dating a leprechaun!”

Flynn is amused when the color of Merida’s cheeks begins to match the color of her hair.

“I’m _Scottish_ , you lunatic.”

“Okay, like, I _hear_ you, but also, would you mind just saying ‘They’re magically delicious!’ like, just once?”

* * * * *

_Week 6_

“This is bull crap! I mean, look at this. We’ve watched six different TV shows today and, what? We spotted one wheelchair? One?! I’m not even asking for these people to be quadriplegic, but come on. The only character I can think of that’s in a wheelchair on television is the kid from Glee, and the guy’s not even paralyzed in real life! What is this?!” Rapunzel was doing an experiment. It was not going well.

“I know,” Merida agreed.

“Like, I’m not asking for that much, am I? I’m not asking for an alternate universe where all these TV shows have main characters with severe disabilities. But like...you’d think they can do better than this.”

“I know.”

“And it’s not like we don’t exist! I looked it up! Over two million people in the US require a wheelchair to get around! The American Disabilities Act exists for a reason! People get into car accidents all the time. Football players? Athletes? And those kids? Those poor kids out there who have no role models, no characters in their TV shows or cartoons who look like them? We don’t all navigate the world like goddamn Hannah Montana, you know!”

“I know.”

“What was that? The Office? Practically all white, all able-bodied. One LGBTQ guy. Parks And Rec? Didn’t see a wheelchair in that one! There’s Family Guy with the one dude in the chair, but that’s certainly not the most delicately handled TV show. Modern Family – nope. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air? Friends? This is just...so...frustrating.”

“I know, love. I know.”

* * * * *

Being in a wheelchair is...different. And it’s not like she can partake in all sorts of activities or anything to distract herself from how different life from a wheelchair is – Rapunzel has plenty of reflection time that comes with being, well, quadriplegic. When the accident had happened, she had a narrative, at least. She was Rapunzel, born in Brooklyn, adopted at the age of two months by her wonderful, biracial fathers who had taught her compassion and acceptance and love from her backyard in Newark. She had raised butterflies every spring, watched them cocoon and go from caterpillars to winged miracles. She had made undercooked heart-shaped pancakes for Father’s Day when she was ten and surprised her dads. She had woken up Christmas morning in the seventh grade to Pascal, ten-weeks old at the time with a big green ribbon around his tiny neck. She was an aspiring artist hoping to go to art school in New York when she graduated from Corona. She was probably bisexual without a personal need for labels and very in love with the Scottish immigrant with an attitude big enough for the both of them. She was a teacher’s pet who couldn’t walk past a dandelion without making a wish and who once brought an injured pigeon into her house and kept it safely in her closet because she didn’t want the feral cats to mutilate it. She was Rapunzel, and she knew exactly what that meant.

Everything had gotten jumbled up when the world went black underneath the weight of the wave. She had lost the string that held all the parts of her together. She was an artist who couldn’t make art, a teacher’s pet who could no longer raise her hand or bubble answers into a standardized test. She had a girlfriend whose hand she couldn’t hold. She had dads, already facing the oppression of not only being a gay _and_ interracial couple, but who now had an adopted daughter in a wheelchair. She couldn’t even make them pancakes to show her appreciation for their constant and unyielding support.

But with time – just like her therapist, psychologist, SCI doctor, and physical therapist had told her – things began to heal and fit back into place. The narrative of Rapunzel began to come back together. She re-learned what she did and didn’t like. She didn’t like when strangers stared at the chair, and she really didn’t like to look down and see her arms or hands sitting at weird angles. She _didn’t_ like when people asked her how she got in the chair if she didn’t know them. She did like when people offered to help her. She didn’t like when people still tried to help her after she’d explicitly told them she didn’t need help. She liked the kindness that people showed her. She liked being treated like she wasn’t different, but she didn’t like when people pretended like nothing about her had changed at all. She liked it when people touched the parts of her that still had feeling. She didn’t like having to be carried everywhere, or how she couldn’t adjust herself once she laid down to go to bed. She liked her collar bones. She liked when Merida painted her toenails. She liked that even though everyone in her life _could_ make her eat her vegetables, they didn’t.

Rapunzel also starts to learn more about the community of disabled persons she has now become a welcome part of. Other people in wheelchairs smile at her encouragingly. Just like there is political correctness to gender and race, there are do’s and don’ts to addressing ability.

For one thing, she learns after a session with Elsa in which Rapunzel tearfully expressed her frustration that she was disabled while everyone else seemed to be abled, that the people at Elsa’s clinic don’t say ‘abled.’

“Rapunzel, love, that’s just silly,” Elsa had told her. She’d looked exquisite that day, with her long blond-white braid and a blue patterned headband that made her eyes pop. “Abled suggests ability. And you have plenty of abilities. As many as a person who still has synapses connecting their brains to the rest of their nervous system. You are able to show emotion. You are able to comfort those who need it. You are able to educate. You are able to learn. You are able to fundraise. You are able to get around. You are able to see, and taste, and smell. You are able to do algebra that I certainly couldn’t do. You are able to sing. You are able to sleep, and have dreams. You are able to make me laugh. You are able to have romantic relationships. You are full to the brim of abilities, Rapunzel.”

“Okay, well...for...for _practical_ purposes, how am I supposed to distinguish? Between the disabled and the…?”

“Temporarily able-bodied,” Elsa finished.

“That’s a mouthful,” Rapunzel laughed a watery laugh as Elsa wiped away her tears.

“Perhaps,” Elsa smiled, “But it’s true. Today, my body functions pretty well. I can digest gluten and my five senses are working pretty well. But who knows? Tomorrow I could have a chemical splashed in my eye. I could get diagnosed with cancer. I might develop diabetes. My body is not ‘abled.’ It’s working right now, but there’s no guarantee it will indefinitely.”

Another important tidbit Rapunzel learns from an infomercial reel at the doctor’s office while she waits on a second round of MRI scans and spinal X-Rays is that disabled people’s lives are not tragedies and those who care for the disabled are not heroes. Her dads aren’t ‘heroes’ for still feeding, housing, and loving their daughter after her accident. They are parents, doing their duty, as parents, to raise their only daughter. Nothing more, nothing less.

She also has started to realize that in today’s society, a person’s worth is tied to their ability to do work in a capitalist society. If she doesn’t have a transferable skill that she can use to earn money, she is, in the eyes of the economy, useless. Collateral damage. The government gives you disability and then leaves you in the dust. On days when this weighs heavily on her mind, she tries desperately to remember Elsa’s list of things she is able to do. Show emotion. Comfort. Educate. Show emotion. Comfort. Educate.

 _I am worthy. I am valid. I am worthy. I am valid_.

It is not easy to remember when society keeps telling you that you’re not.

The floodgates really open up when Rapunzel reads an article that Belle emails to her about institutionalized ableism. It takes a while for Rapunzel to wrap her head around it – she’s only sixteen, after all – but it starts to click. The education system is not designed for disabled persons to succeed. College is not easily accessible to the disabled. Neither is grocery shopping. Or obtaining food stamps. Or receiving health care for a preexisting condition. It seems the entire country has not invited the disabled to the decision-making table; it’s simply not wheelchair accessible.

And on top of that, Rapunzel spends a lot of time thinking about the fact that not every disability is visible. She sees service dogs (which people try to pet?! Get out.) who are for conditions like epilepsy and seizures. There are mental health battles being fought all across the world. There are men and women who pull trig and suffer from horrible eating disorders. ADHD. Colorblindness. There’s alcoholism and drug addiction, diabetes and severe allergies, asthma and people who are unable to smell anything. Not every disability is visible. Not every disability is visible. Rapunzel becomes a kinder person because of it.

She becomes more critical of other movements she once so vehemently supported. Can she be a feminist if disabled women – and their ungodly rates of sexual assault – are widely ignored by the ‘feminist’ community? Is the sex positivity movement really that beneficial to a quadriplegic like herself? Do they consider how disabled women occupy space? What it means to be a woman who looks ‘different’ in a culture that values women for their appearances? Rapunzel’s a feminist, alright, but a damn concerned one.

There’s a new perspective to see when you take in the world from the lookout of a wheelchair.

* * * * *

Rapunzel is, unfortunately, back at the hospital, this time for a psychological evaluation. Lovely. She’d at least been hoping for a change of scenery, some austere oak bookshelves or fluffy pillows or a bean bag chair, but no – the psychologist is on the first floor and wears pale blue scrubs like all the rest of them. The room is as white and sterile as every other room she has visited in the hospital. Rapunzel tries to get her heart rate down to normal.

Her psychologist is a short Indian woman who wears a red bindi and has a thick accent. She beckons her into the room with a clipboard. It is the first time Rapunzel can move about the hospital of her own volition, so she puffs into the straw, forward, and follows the doctor into the room. Rapunzel notices immediately that it has no windows.

“I’m gonna just start with some basic information to get you caught up in the system. Is that okay?”

“Sure.”

“Do you want your dads to be in the room with us?”

“No, that’s okay – you guys can go grab a coffee or something,” Rapunzel says to her fathers, who have accompanied her to as many doctors’ appointments as she would let them. She tries to erase the hurt puppy looks on their faces from her mind as they slink out of the room. She knows it’s for their own good.

When the psychologist gets to the generic, “Have you experienced any suicidal ideation?” questions that Rapunzel had anticipated, she knows she’s made the right choice.

She’s not thinking about that anymore, not really. For what it’s worth, Rapunzel is proud of herself for her own strength through all of this. For getting out of bed in the mornings. For letting her dads claw the hairbrush through her thick blond hair. For eating. For being able to go whole days without crying. But the thought has crossed her mind, she can’t deny it. She has had to relearn what it is that makes life worth living.

It’s not until later that the psychologist royally fucks up.

“Okay, phew!” she smiles. Psychologists are always smiling. “Now that all those questions are out of the way, we can get to talking. Let’s start with here and now. How are you feeling?”

Rapunzel’s eyes glint. “I’m not feeling much of anything these days, actually.” Her eyes go to her paralyzed body, and the doctor’s follow.

“Rapunzel, oh my, I am so sorry–”

“It’s fine,” Rapunzel says, deciding the conversation is not worth having. “I knew what you meant. Emotionally, I feel okay, I guess.”

The doctor still looks embarrassed, but she tries to recover.

They talk about lots of topics. Rapunzel tries to be kind and cooperative. Yes, her dads are taking good care of her. Yes, every morning she wakes up every morning in bliss and then remembers that she has lost the use of everything from the shoulders down. No, she doesn’t like leaving the house. No, she doesn’t have body image issues (yet). Yes, she is eating. No, she doesn’t want to go to school in the fall.

It is exhausting. The psychologist brings her to tears. She cannot tell if this is intentional or not.

The psychologist informs her that at the time, she doesn’t feel the need to prescribe her with antidepressants. Rapunzel is relieved; she’s taking enough pills as it is.

“But I’d like to schedule a follow-up appointment,” the psychologist says. Of course. You win some, you lose some.

* * * * *

Belle is over. Jeff and Greg are giving the girls some privacy and working on some hospital bills in Jeff’s office on the second floor. They’ve kindly emptied Rapunzel’s catheter and fed her a granola bar and glass of water before Belle arrives, so that the hangout can almost pass as normal.

Belle has brought Mulan and a few other girls from school. Pocahontas is there. They all wanted to see how Rapunzel was doing, though whether it’s out of compassion or curiosity, Rapunzel still isn’t sure.

Things seem to be going okay. Rapunzel’s chair is stationed in the living room, and the three girls have gathered around on couches and the like. An hour into talking over scones and coffee that Greg has prepared, Merida arrives and joins the fray. The girls – all straight-A students – quickly find themselves discussing _To Kill A Mockingbird_ , the summer read for all incoming juniors. Rapunzel cringes. Thinking about Corona High School is anxiety-inducing. Summer, at least, is the great equalizer. _Everyone_ is watching too much Netflix and too many YouTube videos and reading fanfic and sleeping ‘til noon. In the summer, her sedentary nature isn’t all that different from everyone else’s. But school. School means traversing the hallways. Avoiding lockers that could fly open at any moment. Teachers and math problems that she only knows how to do by hand. Tests. Quizzes. Homecoming football games. School is a battle she is convinced she cannot win.

And that is all Mulan, Belle, and Pocahontas want to talk about. They’ve just received their schedules for next year, Rapunzel realizes, and they are excited to talk about it. They try to include Rapunzel in the conversation, but she is shaken. School is insurmountable. It is a place she will always be different. It is a place she cannot return.

Rapunzel starts crying. She didn’t mean to. She didn’t even notice the tears coming on. But suddenly she is crying, and breathing too hard, which soon turns into hyperventilation and sobbing.

Jeff and Greg have to apologetically drive all of the girls home. Rapunzel stays in her room the rest of the day.

* * * * * *

She was doing so well.

Rapunzel wakes in a sweat, her head thrashing about on her pillow. She tries to sit up and shrieks when her body and limbs don’t respond. It is an almost nightly event, but each evening it happens seems exponentially worse than the night before. It is always difficult to wake up and re-remember that she is a paralyzed sixteen-year-old. It’s jarring to go from frolicking barefoot in the woods in her dreams, twirling flower crowns, sketching Merida, to finding herself in the dark of a cold bedroom that is not hers – not really – and be glued to her bed. She can’t make herself a glass of warm milk, or pull her covers over her head, or put in the headphones and listen to another of Belle’s books on tape. To call out for her dads is to drag them out of bed late in the night, and it’s nearly four in the morning. She knows the bags under their eyes and the hunches of their shoulders are her fault. She doesn’t want to be a bigger burden than she already is, though she knows they would argue profusely against the idea that they have ever minded taking care of their daughter.

And so she lies awake, aching and scared, waiting for her breathing to go back to normal. The sweat on the back of her neck irritates her until six in the morning, when she finally drifts back to sleep.

What she wouldn’t give just to reach up to scratch her nose.

The baby monitor has not woken her dads, for which she is grateful. It’s a sign of their exhaustion how often they sleep through her outbursts in the night. She doesn’t tell them about her night terrors the next morning as they spoonfeed her oatmeal with fresh strawberries and wipe the orange juice off her chin that has dribbled down. Another day begins.

It goes on like this, she realizes. Two steps forward, one step back. You know, without the whole stepping part.

* * * * *

The distraction Rapunzel needs comes in the form of a new friend. Her dads get her to her physical therapy appointment early this Thursday, meaning the three of them have ample time to flip through magazines in the waiting room. Rapunzel doesn’t mind this, though. She feels cute today in her yoga pants and a loose coral-pink blouse, her hair actually looking brushed and washed for once. She looks on at last month’s People magazine with Jeff, commenting on the who-wore-it-best sections and disagreeing for disagreement’s sake. She knows she’ll never win an argument over anything fashion-related with Jeff.

It is then that Ariel – the girl from the first session, with flowing red hair and the whitest teeth Rapunzel has ever seen – wheels herself into the waiting room and parks herself beside Rapunzel. Ariel is admittedly strange. She calls things by seemingly made-up names and giggles at inappropriate times. But Rapunzel instantly likes her. Ariel – who is not quadriplegic and is only paralyzed from the waist down – is a cheerfully whimsical person who seems to move about the world unphased by just about everything. That’s exactly what Rapunzel needs, she realizes. To stop taking everything so seriously.

“Hiya! I’m Ariel,” she introduces, rolling right up to Rapunzel after she has checked in at the front desk.

“Oh, hi,” Rapunzel says, flattered and surprised. “My name’s Rapunzel.”

“Rapunzel? That’s a funny name. I’ve never heard it before. Is it common?”

Rapunzel laughed. “I don’t think so, no.”

“So you’re unique!” Ariel concluded, matter-of-fact.

“If you mean the wheelchair–”

“I don’t.”

 

Ariel tells Rapunzel about herself unprompted. She grew up in California, on the beach. She was a surfer. Loved the water, always had. Used to wake up on summer mornings and hit the waves before the sun had even risen in the sky. It was only a matter of time before she joined the Swim & Dive team at her high school.

“A diving accident. That’s what put me in this chair,” Ariel says, matter-of-fact. A line she has clearly practiced, rolled over and over in her mouth, recited in bathroom mirrors and to stuffed animals and in her sleep and in therapist’s office. She’s worked on that line. And it comes out smooth as honey. Someday, Rapunzel will tell her story with the same level of cool, calm, and collectedness. Today, she stumbles (figuratively).

“I...well, I...you see...” She can sense her dads listening, even though their eyes don’t divorce the magazines they’re suddenly invested in. “There was a, a wave, and a C4 spinal cord injury and now, I, uh, I can’t...”

“I understand,” Ariel says, and puts a gentle hand on Rapunzel’s knees. She has starfish painted on her fingernails. It is weird for a stranger to be so forward and kind. The gesture is appreciated, but somewhere in the back of her head, Rapunzel can hear Merida growling. It makes her lips turn up at the corners.

“Yours permanent?” Rapunzel asks. What a relief it is to talk to someone...like her. A normally offensive question seems gentle from someone else in a chair.

“Yup. You too?”

“Looks like it.”

“How long ago?” Ariel asks, pushing her black thick-framed glasses up the bridge of her small nose.

“Only since May. It’s been two months.”

“Wow. I would’ve never guessed; you seem so at ease with it. When I hit the diving board wrong, I couldn’t leave my house for a year,” Ariel muses, still smiling despite the darkness of the topic.

“When did you...?” Rapunzel nudges.

“Freshman year of high school. Four years ago now. Seems crazy to think about. I miss...what’s the word? Dancing! I miss dancing,” Ariel says, unfailingly cheerful. She brushes her bangs out of her face.

A doctor Rapunzel hasn’t seen before emerges from the back at the same time as Elsa. Each doctor smiles at their patient.

“It was nice to meet you!” Ariel says. “Can I get your number?”

Ariel types Rapunzel’s phone number into her phone. Almost immediately, Rapunzel’s phone lights up with an unknown number. It reads “This is Arieeeeeeel.”

It stirs something in Rapunzel. This is something that she can do, all by herself. She can meet people. She can make friends. She can get a phone number. She can reply to a text message.

She can, she can, she can.

The session with Elsa goes fabulously.

* * * * *

_Week 7_

Time goes on. Summer goes on. Jeff teases Greg for watching the pool boy and Pascal learns ‘shake’ and they buy the milk and the eggs and the shampoo and the toilet paper. Merida referees soccer games for elementary school kids on Tuesday afternoons and Saturday mornings.

But for Rapunzel, she is losing time. Time until August 8 – the first day of school. Or at least, the first day of school at Corona High. Whether or not it would be her first day of school, was still hanging in the air.

“Honey, we should talk about next year,” her dads would say, and she would dance around the topic – the only real dancing she was up to these days – and change the subject.

* * * * *

“I want to paint!” Rapunzel screeches in the kitchen. Merida’s over – as usual – and they’ve just had breakfast. Well, Merida made breakfast. Merida was feeding Rapunzel fruit, blueberries today, and Rapunzel is fed up and energized. “For the love of _all_ that is _holy_ I want to paint! And no more blueberries!” She glared, turning her head away from Merida’s outstretched hand.

Rapunzel’s been angsty all morning. She’d wanted coffee, but Merida realized quite quickly that that had been a hilarious mistake. The ball of energy that was Rapunzel has been rekindled; the fire behind her eyes and the determination in her brow returned, at least for the morning. These days, it was hard to predict what kind of mood Rapunzel would be in. But today, she’s alive and loud and demanding, and Merida is head-over-heels for it. She should make Rapunzel coffee more often.

“I just want to _do_ something, ya know? It’s not even that I feel sorry for myself. I don’t, really!” Merida quirked an eyebrow. “I just...I have all these ideas in my head! Of cigarettes in crayon boxes, and, and houses made out of balloons and _mermaids_ , Mer, I just want to sketch some mermaids! Their long hair, their tails...”

“...seducing men to their deaths...” Merida agreed.

“Exactly! I never get to paint a mermaid again. This is crap!” Rapunzel exclaimed, exasperated. Merida was relieved to see Rapunzel joke in this way. It was good for her. They couldn’t be so serious all the time. No one should be heartbroken forever.

“Watch your tongue, young lady!” Merida snapped, imitating her own mother.

“Crap crap crap crap crap! CRAP!” Rapunzel nodded her own approval on the last one.

“Me mum is cringing somewhere, just now, I can feel it,” laughed Merida.

“ _Mer._ I’m serious! I want to paint again! The sun, the moon! You! Little black bears, frolicking in the woods. The woods! The rivers. Mushrooms, with smiling little faces on them. Eugene! I want to paint Eugene, when he makes that stupid face that he thinks is charming. The one all the girls fall for. And Belle. Belle, with all her books stacked high around her. A city of books, Mer. A city. The city – New York. I’d paint Times Square. Or my dads. Just a portrait of them, hanging out. Maybe sitting on the couch. Or my dads _in_ Times Square. I want to paint my physical therapist and the beach at sunset and those red-eyed tree frogs that I’ve only ever seen at the Rainforest Café. I want to paint the way fresh cookies smell.” She sighed.

“I love you,” Merida smiled. “And I’m tired of hearing you complain. You want to paint all those things? Let’s paint them.”

It was Rapunzel’s turn to be confused. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she tilted her head like a confused puppy.

“Come _on_!”

 

Merida wheeled Rapunzel into Rapunzel’s bedroom. Well, the bedroom on the first floor. It didn’t quite feel like Rapunzel’s room, yet. Didn’t seem lived-in.

“Wait here,” Merida remarked, and then took off upstairs.

She stomped around Rapunzel’s old bedroom. She picked an untouched easel out of the closet and propped it up against the stand. She hurtled around, a hurricane, locating a paint brush here, a watercolor set there, oil pastels in drawers and on the window sill and on the nightstand. Rapunzel watched, mildly amused as Merida bombarded through the room.

“Okay. There,” Merida said with the hodgepodge of materials she’d assembled displayed out in front of her. “What are we painting today?”

Rapunzel is floored. There’s Merida, in her big T-shirt and running shorts, half-smiling with her hands on her hips as she waits patiently to hear whatever Rapunzel has to say – to do whatever Rapunzel wants. She’s got all the paints arranged on the desk, and all the wrong brushes, and she can’t even draw stick figures too well for God’s sake, and yet here she is, ready to make art.

To be Rapunzel’s hands.

“Okay. well..gosh. Okay, grab the blue. No, Mer, the other blue–”

Merida set brush to paper, following Rapunzel’s instructions to a tee.

“Just a tad there, touch lightly Merida! Like a butterfly in your palm. Delicate!

“No! Oh my gosh, Merida, you’ve smeared everything with your elbow again!

“Okay, hmph. Almost...

“Does my butt really look like that?” Rapunzel asked slyly.

“I’m embellishing,” Merida smirked, looking up from the painting.

“Oh goodness.”

Merida watched as Rapunzel got enveloped in it, became focused, directed Merida left and right, scolding her only playfully as she messed up and wiped up her mistakes with a wet paper towel. Merida wasn’t much of an artist, but Rapunzel made it easy. She thought ‘Punz could probably lead one of those group painting classes, the kind suburban moms go to on bingo night and post about on Facebook.

“How’d I do?” Merida asked, hopeful, three hours later, exhausted and with a streak of yellow paint on the bridge of her nose, her unwieldy orange curls flopping in her face.

“It’s perfect, Mer. It’s perfect.”

* * * * * *

In the sticky heat of midsummer, the girls’ soccer team starts practicing again. Rapunzel crinkles her nose at the stink of sweaty shinguards and grass whenever Merida stops by after practice.

But today, Rapunzel has physical therapy with Elsa, and the timing is good; the team is scrimmaging Agrabah High, and Merida has been on the field all day, from refereeing the third graders in the morning, then watching the Corona boys get whooped by Agrabah, and finally playing herself. Merida is tense; Rapunzel’d had a bad night and had been short with Merida on the phone. Merida had sulked the rest of the evening, earning a harsh “Snap out of it,” from her mother at the dinner table and whines of “You’re no fun anymore” from her little brothers when she’d declined to play hide-and-go-seek with them for the third time this week. That one had stung in particular.

The day is long, the sun is hot (which their black jerseys only exacerbate) and Merida is admittedly dehydrated no matter how much water she chugs. She’s irritated. The team treats her different. She’s not in on the jokes anymore. She hasn’t spent much time with them now that she uses all of her allotted socializing hours (thanks, Mum) to be with Rapunzel. The team’s chemistry has faltered, on and off the field. Merida doesn’t know who’s dating who or why everyone’s collectively mad at Gaston or why Coach Ralph has missed so much practice. Likewise, the team doesn’t know if they should say, “Sorry about your girlfriend” or “How’s Rapunzel?” or nothing at all. They opt for the latter. The rift grows.

On the field, at least, some of the noise dissipates as instinct and muscle memory kick in. Her body remembers. How to dribble. How to pass. How to run with everything she’s got.

She’s out of control. Her chest and shoulders heave as she pushes herself to her limit. She’s sprinting and she’s angry and she’s not passing the ball. She covers more of the field than she ever has, ignoring directions from her coach on the sidelines and just fucking going for it. Merida’s almost dizzy with it, kicking hard, barreling through Agrabah’s defense, almost kicking the hand off the opponent’s goalie. She’s flying and she’s merciless and she’s aggressive and the world is tuned out and she’s heaving and she’s crying and she’s sprinting and it’s just her and the ball and–

The whistle blows. She has body checked a girl on the other team for the ball. Her feet are still battling violently for the ball when the whistle registers and she stands still, like she has been electrocuted. It is then that she realizes the girl on the other team has not gotten up.

Merida crumples to her knees. She’s panting and lifts her hands above her head. _“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,”_ she breathes. The girl’s right knee is bleeding. She is crying. Merida wipes angry tears out of her own eyes. A trickle of sweat dribbles down her temple. Her whole body is wired and the white-hot heat of the summer sun is boiling.

“Take a knee, Merida,” her coach demands, stomping past Merida with purpose as he moves onto the field to check on the hurt player. The coach from the other team is doing the same.

The ref presents her with a yellow card. She moves like a zombie off the field and onto the sideline, popping an orange slice into her mouth and glaring out at the field.

The opponent-girl stands up and hobbles off the field on one leg. She has to wrap her arm around her coach and Coach Ralph, who bear her weight to move her to the opposite sideline.

“What the _hell_?” Coach Ralph snaps at her as Merida takes a seat in the grass far from the other girls on the team. She sucks on the orange, discards the peel, and squirts water into her mouth from a Gatorade bottle, all while still squinting angrily at the field as if has somehow offended her. “You’re out the rest of the scrimmage, Merida. Get it together.”

* * * * *

Jasmine Ahmad  
2:56 pm  
Hey, Rapunzel. Sorry to be sending you this,  
but Merida kinda freaked out on the field today.  
Thought you’d want to know. She’s been bottling  
things up lately, I think. Might be good to talk to  
her. Sorry. Hope you’re feeling okay.

* * * * *

“Sit,” Rapunzel demands. It catches Merida by surprise. She’d just showered and was still fuming after the soccer game when an unusually bossy text message from Rapunzel had lit up her phone. _Come over. We need to talk_ , it read. The words would normally have stopped Merida’s heart in her chest, but she’s heated enough that the text only pisses her off. Still, she’s not a bad girlfriend, even on her worst days, and so she hops on her moped with her hair still wet and heads over to Rapunzel’s with her jaw set and her teeth clenched. If Rapunzel’s tone hadn’t caught her so off guard, Merida might’ve snapped.

Instead, she sits obediently, eyeing Rapunzel warily. She’s had a fucking shit day and isn’t exactly in the mood to fight with Rapunzel. But Rapunzel just stares at her expectantly, eyebrows raised like she knows something (admittedly, she probably does). She waits and waits for Merida to say something.

Merida finally caves. “ _What?_ ” she spits.

“First, take a deep breath and decide if you’re mad at me or if you’re mad about something else. Because I really don’t need misdirected angst right about now.”

Merida breathes, and a sensation of shame loosens her jaw, makes her muscles relax. Of course she’s not mad at Rapunzel. How is the girl always right?

“Better?” Rapunzel asks. Merida nods, embarrassed. Rapunzel softens. “Mer, talk to me. What’s going on?”

“I...I don’t know...” Merida hesitates. Who is she to complain to her girlfriend who’s probably never going to walk again about her feelings?

“You feel guilty. You feel like this is your fault, don’t you?” Rapunzel says, not accusatory but matter-of-fact. Merida sputters. Christ, Rapunzel, not one to beat around the bush, are you? she thinks.

“I, I mean, I – Rapunzel, where is this coming from? Jesus?”

“Merida, I’m serious. I can tell. The way you tense up when it comes to the chair and the doctors and stuff. I can’t even _mention_ the beach without you flinching– see! Merida, this is important. Grab my hands.”

Merida is dumbstruck. She does as she is told, robotic.

“Merida. No, Merida, look me in the eye. This. Is. Not. Your. Fault.”

That’s when Merida loses it.

“It _is_ my fault,” she gets out through broken, full-body sobs, Rapunzel’s limp hands held tightly in her own. “It’s my fault, Rapunzel. _I’m_ the one who suggested we go to the beach on the last day of school. _I’m_ the one who was friends with everyone at the party. _I’m_ the one who insisted that we stay. If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be walking. Rapunzel, how can you say that this _isn’t_ my fault? ”

“Because I am an autonomous person who makes my own decisions, and I’m insulted that you think that you had taken this away from me. These were my choices, Merida. It’s not your fault for _wanting_ me to stay at the party. I _chose_ to stay at the party because I _love_ you and spending time with you is the best way I can imagine filling whatever time I am granted on this Earth _. I_ dove into the water after the frisbee. _I_ wasn’t paying enough attention. You know what you did that night, Merida? You pulled me out of the water. You _rescued_ me. You called 9-1-1. You rode with me in the ambulance. You contacted my dads. You sat up for _hours_ in the waiting room outside my room – yeah, my dads told me about that, Mer. And now, you rescue me every single day that you _choose_ to spend time with me, that you look past whatever it is that my body’s become, and you adore me not _despite_ but _because_ of who I am. So I’m not gonna hear it anymore, Mer, and I’m not gonna let you beat yourself up over this. This isn’t your fault.

“This isn’t. Your fault.”

It takes thirty minutes for Merida to catch her breath enough to speak, and even then she has nothing to say. Rapunzel continues to amaze her. She always was the stronger of the two of them.

 

Merida comes home with red-brimmed eyes, exhausted from crying. Her dad wraps her up in a bear hug when she walks through the door. He might not be the best with words, but he senses her hurt and she could swear, his hugs have healing power. It’s the first night in weeks that Merida sleeps through the night.  
It’s not her fault.

* * * * *

Rapunzel, too, is exhausted from the emotional labor of the day. She’d spent the morning in a cocktail of therapies – physical, emotional, now they’re suggesting electrical? – and spent the rest of the day with a wet and snotty Merida on her shoulder, gradually letting the guilt radiate off of Merida’s shoulders in waves.

All in all, productive, but exhausting.

She’d meant what she’d said. Her condition was not Merida’s fault, and she didn’t blame her. How could Merida’ve known what would happen? Of course, Rapunzel wishes she could do the day over again, that she could kiss Merida on the beach so hard that they never make it to the party, or that she could throw the frisbee just one more time, or that she had voiced her desire for late-night Sonic or recommended a movie or been grounded or _something_. But that’s not on Merida. As her therapist reminds her, it’s not Rapunzel’s fault either. It is no one’s fault. It is an act of unfairness in an unfair universe that does not have to explain itself.

Her dads sense her exhaustion. They have been so good to her, alternating days off to spend time with her and make sure she doesn’t get lonely. They pull all the stops. Her favorite foods. Her favorite movies. Buying new records and playing them in the house. Doing her makeup, her hair, painting her nails. Downloading new books on tape to the iPod Belle gifted her back in the hospital.

Tonight, though, they correctly interpret the worry lines and bags under Rapunzel’s eyes, and move around her quietly, waiting. Waiting for her to come to them, if she needs them. (Her dads have been going to therapy, too).

She puffs her way toward their bedroom door, where Jeff is brushing his teeth and Greg is turning off the evening news in a T-shirt and boxers.

“Can I...sleep in here tonight?” she asks, small. She knows it’s weird. She knows it makes her sound like a six-year-old having a nightmare. But she is a sixteen-year-old living a nightmare, which, she has decided, gives her some leeway. Her dads, elated that Rapunzel feels comfortable enough to come to them when she needs help, that she doesn’t shut them out through this journey.

“What are we watching tonight?” Greg asks, once he’s brushed Rapunzel’s teeth and gets her into her pajamas – a routine she’s become used to, even comfortable with, no matter how impossible it’d seemed in the hospital room a month and a half ago. She’s sandwiched between her fathers in their king-sized bed.

“ _Harry Potter_!”

“Again?” her dads laugh, synchronized.

“Always.”

 _Harry Potter_ it is.

* * * * *

The real damper of the week comes on Sunday. Dr. White, stone-cold and white as snow, delivers the news in a voice like ice.

“I’m sorry, dear. The condition appears to be permanent.”

Rapunzel had fainted. When she awoke, she had to be told the news again. It didn’t go over well the second time, either.

* * * * *

There would be no more, “Let’s try to see if you can stand.” No more, “Try to move your wrist. Your pinkie finger.” The towel, it seemed, was being thrown in. The doctors had come to their decision. It felt like her paralysis was on trial, and the jury had just come back in with the verdict.

Rapunzel had been working hard. Trying to move something. Trying in physical therapy. Dreaming about walking. Nothing fancy. She wasn’t gonna run a marathon, or join a ballroom dance team, or play a sport. She just wanted to walk. She had been trying, so deeply, to walk again.

The Earth-shattering news is somehow still Earth-shattering despite the fact that they had all known it was coming. Known the CT scans weren’t looking good. Known Rapunzel hadn’t been able to move anything from the collarbones down in months. And yet. There is a funny little human thing called hope that dangles teasingly in front of our naive eyes, and it had distracted Rapunzel and co. They had thought: Maybe. They had thought: Let’s cross our fingers. They had thought: You never know. They had thought: Miracles do happen.

Rapunzel wasn’t getting a miracle. Not today, and probably not ever.

Something about the whole experience thus far had felt temporary. It was a lesson in appreciation. It was God saying, here is your trial. When you have learned and grown from it, you will be rewarded. She had learned. She had gained a whole new perspective on the world, and human worth, and ableism. She had grown. She had grown strong for her fathers and for her girlfriend, mentally tough and powerful. She had passed the test. This is the part of the fairytale where she gets to stand up again. Where the beast gets turned back into the prince. Where the ogre gets turned back into the girl.

The only people like her that they show on TV are the miracle-cases, where someone gets told they’re never going to walk again and then runs the fucking Boston Marathon. No one ever shares the story of the girl who gets paralyzed permanently on the beach and then the doctors deliver the bad news that, in fact, no, she will never, ever walk again.

Her therapy sessions run long. Her dads have to go out any buy more Kleenex. Pascal puts his chin in her lap to comfort her, and she looks down at him longingly, wishing more than anything to pet him and feel his silky ears just one more time.

* * * * *

_Week 8_

Despite the unfortunate news, everyone and their mother tries to get Rapunzel to go back to school (yes, even Merida’s parents stop by with a little back-to-school gift and wish Rapunzel well, telling her they miss having her around for Friday dinners).  
Naturally, Merida’s the worst. She starts a goddamn Twitter hashtag about it.

Merida @support_brave_ladies  
Hey y’all. Trying to get Rapunzel McGrumpypants to come back 2 school in the fall. She won’t listen to me. Help? #getPunz2school

Mulan @chinesewarriorprincess 17s  
The halls of Corona wouldn’t be the same without you #getPunz2school

Gaston @bigboybigmuscles 33s  
Ok but who am I gonna cheat off of this year??? #getPunz2school

Belle @theBELLEjar 2m  
Lord knows you’re the only person in a ten mile radius who can give me a run for my money for Valedictorian. Without you it’ll just be *boring* #getPunze2school

Pocahontas @waterislife1491 8m  
#getPunz2school because being differently abled shouldn’t mean you don’t belong at @Corona_High

Pocahontas @waterislife1491 10m  
#getPunz2school because ALL people have a RIGHT to an education @PunzelPaints @BetsyDeVos @realDonaldTrump

Pocahontas @waterislife1491 12m  
#getPunz2school because @ Corona High we stick together and support each other and love each other. You are a part of our #family

 

Rapunzel’s on the little yoga mat in Elsa’s office, lying on her back, her socked right foot in Elsa’s hand as she bends her leg backwards. The sight is satisfying to Rapunzel. She’s in her own headspace, mulling over the events of the week and the events on the news and the sensation of watching her body stretch and move in ways that she misses, when Elsa springs it on her.

“So, what are your plans come August?” Elsa asks innocently. Rapunzel surmises her dads have put her up to this.

“Uh, nothing?” Rapunzel evades, no longer making eye contact with Elsa but rather eyeing Elsa’s sky-blue headband with increased intensity. She can’t avoid it for long, though.

“What about school? You thought at all about going back?”

“I’m not really sure that I could do that,” Rapunzel replies, wishing she could at least sit herself up. She feels the fluorescent lights on her and it’s humiliating not to be able to move, to squirm out of the gaze of Elsa’s undivided attention.

“Why not? From what I hear, you’re a pretty good student.” She switches to the left leg, which is no better.

“I _was_ a good student. I was a straight-A student. And Mr. Breck’s teacher’s pet. He’s the art teacher at Corona. He...he really thought I had a gift, you know? He even emailed my dads to check in on me. But doing school...with all of _this._..” Rapunzel trails off.

“Seems insurmountable?”

“Yeah.”

“You know, a lot of kids like you do pretty well in high school. Even when those high schools aren’t designed for kids like you. It’s...it’s _shitty_ ,” Elsa says honestly, and Rapunzel stirs at an adult using such _language._ “But it can be good, too. You might feel left out if you stay home while all your friends are at school. And having to-do lists and homework and a set time to wake up every day can really be a smart way to battle the depression that sometimes comes with spinal cord injuries like this. Think about it? For me?”

“I will,” Rapunzel says. And she means it.

 

Eugene was, unsurprisingly, far more blunt about it. “Rapunzel,” he’d said, shaking his head incredulously. “Who would you even be if not your know-it-all, nerdy-ass self? Like, can you really imagine yourself anywhere but a classroom come Labor Day?”

“Hmm. The beach, the mall, my bed, my living room, Starbucks, the Renaissance Festival, Detroit, the Grand Canyon, New York, sushi restaurants, Tasmania, Coachella, I’ve always wanted to see Paris–”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Eugene interrupted. He scratched his nose. “There are lots of cool places to be instead of school. Believe me, I’ve ditched enough of it to know. But this is you we’re talking about, Rapunzel. And you, nerd, would probably rather be at school than any of those places.”

Damn. The kid has a point.

 

Her therapist asks her about school just about every time Rapunzel rolls into her office. They talk about other stuff, too – how Rapunzel feels like a burden to her fathers, how she worries that she can’t fulfill Merida’s, or anyone’s, romantic needs as a life partner, how she can’t set pen to paper and how she misses art, which was such a crucial part of who she was. But every time, her therapist manages to sneak in the question: on a scale of 1 to 10, how ready do you think you are to go back to school. Rapunzel’s answers vary, but never surpass 6. Rapunzel’s really, really not ready. There’s online school. Her dads are pretty well-off. She can work simple jobs without a formal education. She could sell things. Work as a cashier or a greeter or something.

High school isn’t totally necessary.

They get to the root of it, as therapists do, and Rapunzel realizes that one of her biggest fears is that she will find that no one ever really liked her for her but only for her intelligence in the classroom and her constant willingness to help others, be that via tutoring a classmate in need or passing a tampon in class to the girl who’s just bled through her shorts. But do they like her for who she is. Will she eat alone at lunch? Will they whisper behind her back?

And while she worries about these things for herself, she worries about them doubly for Merida. Merida, who will no doubt be able to stand her ground, but who certainly doesn’t need to add another struggle to the growing pile. Merida who doesn’t deserve to be outcast for dating the school quadriplegic. People won’t understand. They’ll be too afraid to ask questions and will instead gossip and guess. There will be so much pity, they’ll be able to swim in it.

But at the same time, Rapunzel never goes lower than a 3. A small, indecisive part of her would love to go back to school.

 

Dr. White is the final straw. There is something about her matter-of-factness that she brings to the table that Rapunzel trusts. She can count on Dr. White to give her the full story. And she’s seen plenty of kids like Rapunzel before.

“How’s the wheelchair suiting you, honey?” she asks, checking the fit and Rapunzel’s posture in it.

“It’s amazing,” Rapunzel breathes.

“How’s the wheelchair accessibility at the house?”

“Good. My dads had ramps put in everywhere. I can go everywhere but upstairs. They’re even paving a sidewalk path around the garden in the backyard.”

“That’s lovely. I’m happy to hear they’ve been so supportive. Seems like you’ve got good fathers to lean on.”

“I’m really lucky.”

“You don’t have to say that, Rapunzel.”

“I know. But I feel lucky, Dr. White. I do. I have an unyielding support system,” she says, shaking her head in disbelief at the kindness that surrounds her.

“Well, I’m happy to hear it. And how’s accessibility at school?” She’s still checking the chair, inspecting the straw and the motor.

“I...don’t know,” Rapunzel squeaks, preparing for the onslaught.

“You haven’t checked out the high school?”

“No.”

“Isn’t school in a few months? You might want to do that, Rapunzel, most SCI patients like to check a few weeks in advance regarding their office space or schools, just to be sure, you know, because some locations are a lot better than others and you certainly want to create a stress-free–”

“I, uh, I don’t think I’m gonna go to school this year, Doc.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I just...don’t really think I can handle it. I can barely get around, and the halls are pretty intense, and there’s an elevator to get to the second floor that’s always crowded and really not much time between classes…”

“Rapunzel, can I be honest with you?”

“Sure.”

“You’re too bright of a kid not to go back to school.”

“I’m – sorry? Just because someone is smart doesn’t mean they have to go back to school if they’re not mentally, physically, or emotionally prepared.” Rapunzel is defiant, and correct.

“That’s true, Rapunzel. And I’ve seen some kids your age come through these halls and I knew they weren’t ready. I told them not to go to school. They had some feels to deal with and some internal struggles to set right before they could jump back into that world. And that’s all good and fine. Feelings are valid. I respect that. But Rapunzel, to be frank, I think you’re scared. And you have every right to be scared, child, I’m not saying you don’t, but I think being afraid and being emotionally and physically ready are two very different things. It’s going to be scary to go back, Rapunzel. It’s never not going to be scary. But you are one of the most well-adjusted, confident, and optimistic patients I’ve had come through here. I see something in you that I don’t see in all my patients, Rapunzel. I see a very strong young woman who is more capable than most adults at making the most of things.

“You don’t have to do what I tell you. I’m your doctor, not your boss. But I think it would be a real mistake to not go to school in the fall. It’s only gonna get scarier the longer you put it off, Rapunzel. I think you can do a lot more than you think you are capable of. Trust yourself, kiddo.”

 

Rapunzel has a lot to think about. She doesn’t make any decisions; there’s not exactly a huge rush, what with it still being mid-summer and her having nothing to do but mull over her decision. It eats up many of her waking hours. School. Not school. School. Not School.

She ruminates, not discussing the topic with anyone willingly and making long pro and con lists in her head. But she asks Greg to plug in Belle’s iPod, and she listens to _To Kill A Mockingbird_ on tape.

Not for any _reason_. Just in _case_. Jeez.

* * * * *

It is not until Rapunzel’s dads are waving at her nervously from the car in the driveway as they drive off (“We’ll be back in an hour, okay? Are you sure you’re going to be okay, sweetheart?”) to couples therapy (their marriage is fine, their daughter is not), Rapunzel realizes that it is the first time she has been alone – really, truly home alone – since the accident. She feels free.

She uses the straw attached to her chair to move about, plants herself in front of the front window and listens to the radio that her dads have charitably left on. She lazily watches outside – the cars go by, the neighbors walking their three German Shepherds, kids on their bikes.

Because she can’t feel it, it takes her a moment to notice that Pascal, her trusty golden, has wedged his big, drooly head into her lap and is panting happily next to her. His company is more than welcome on this sunny day.

“Hey, buddy,” she says, and can’t hold back her sunrise smile as the mere sound of her tinkling voice sends his tail into a frenzy. “Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?” She is grateful that she can move her neck down close enough to his face that she can be smothered in Pascal-kisses. His pink sandpaper tongue sends her into a fit of giggles. Getting excited, Pascal jumps up, his wet nose tickling her cheek and his tail sweeping happily back and forth, front paws resting on Rapunzel’s thigh and back legs planted on the hardwood.

It’s the little things.

 

Her dads pull up in the driveway at the same time Eugene shows up in the new car he got for his 17th birthday. It’s a black Honda Civic, and it’s all he’s been talking about. Both of her dads plant kisses on her cheek, and then greet Pascal, thanking him for taking good care of Rapunzel while they were away. They greet Eugene, who also enters from the garage, pleasantly, asking him about his upcoming senior year and what he plans to do for college. Eugene slips between the questions with the suave that only practice can provide, and then her dads head off to their respective offices to do work. Rapunzel has noticed that her dads hold hands more than they used to. Tensions were high in those weeks after the accident. It makes her happy to know their family will be okay.

“What’s on the agenda today, pal?” Rapunzel practically sings. Today is a Good Day.

“I want to pimp out your chair.”

Rapunzel starts. _“What?”_

“You heard me! I think we should pimp out your chair. I’ve never seen you wear black a day in your life, Rapunzel, and it just doesn’t make sense that you’re rolling around in this black tank of a chair. I want to pimp it out.”  
“

I’m not seven,” Rapunzel says, still confused. “What do you want to do, make it light up?” She says sarcastically.

But Eugene grins.

 

Eugene picks her up with ease – it’s almost embarrassing, but Rapunzel is used to it by now. She notices that the people in her life seem to have an easier and easier job picking her up. She wonders if they are getting stronger or if she is still losing weight. He sets her on the couch and gets to work on the chair in the living room, in front of a muted TV showing Friends re-runs.

The chair, when he’s done with it, looks...cute. Rapunzel wants to laugh. ‘Cute’ was never a word she thought she would use to describe her wheelchair, but Eugene has done an incredible job. He glues the quaintest fairy lights along the back. He creates cushioned violet armrests and paints the wheels lavender. He attaches a full-blown speaker system and decorates the Sip-and-Puff straw with small white flowers. He hangs a basket off the back of it and loads it with a few useful items and clever compartments. He creates a detachable iPad holder so she can have the screen beside her on the chair, and she can even control whether the iPad is lifted or lowered with the use of the straw. He paints a full-blown golden sunshine – their high school mascot – on the back, and it is beautiful, and she never knew that he could paint quite like that.

“I’m sorry, ‘Punz, I really thought it would’ve dried sooner, but I don’t think I can put you in it just y–”

“Shush!” she hushes him. “It is perfect. Let me admire it.”

“Whatever you say, goofball.”

“I’m gonna feel like a princess in that thing.”

“I think that’s sort of the point, kid.”

* * * * *

It’s Wednesday, and Wednesday means Starbucks with Merida. Rapunzel doesn’t have the lungs to sip ‘n’ puff her way the entire mile and a half to Starbucks and back, so Merida pushes her. They put on their ball caps and sunglasses like usual.

Merida has a Wednesday routine; she’s just as good as Jeff and Greg with the medical side of things. She feeds Rapunzel, empties her catheter, removes her waste and replaces the bag. They catch up over the morning’s stretches – Merida bending and unbending Rapunzel’s knees and elbows, fingers and ankles. They make satisfying popping sounds, and Merida could do run through the routine in her sleep at this point. Of course, it takes a little longer when Merida does it thanks to all the kissing...

She then undresses Rapunzel. It’s funny, in a way. Definitely not the way Merida imagined taking off her first significant others’ clothes. And she’d imagined it plenty of times, at sleepovers and at lunch tables and in the locker room, pre-teen and teenage girls gossiping and fantasizing about what their “first time” would be like, how it would feel, what would happen. Then, of course, she’d imagined it when she and Rapunzel had started dating. Had wondered how it would feel to have Rapunzel on top of her, skin on skin, sweaty and flushed and rhythmic and arched. She’d imagined pulling off her blouse, kissing her shoulder blades, cherishing the little pink bow in the middle of her bra; freeing Rapunzel of the contraption entirely, paying attention to every part of her...

Undressing Rapunzel is not that. It is not grabby hands and impossible eagerness and shredded clothes and limp, post-orgasm bodies. But in a way, it is more intimate than that ever could have been. It is gentle, and it is soft. Careful and consensual. It is _I love you_ in buttoning Rapunzel’s shirt and it is _I promise_ with every changed pair of underwear and it is _I want you still_ with the zipping of jeans. It is _I am here_ ; it is _I am not leaving you_ ; it is _You are more than your flesh_ ; it is _I love everything that you are_. It is normal and routine and domestic. It is trust. It is _Let me see your nakedness and love you more_.

Today, Rapunzel wears light gray joggers, a black sports bra with fancy cutouts in the back that get the girls tangled and laughing, and a light green tank top that appropriately reads, “Long hair, don’t care.” The green, of course, matches her eyes, and Merida is left puzzling over how one person can look so damn cute all the _damn_ time.

The Starbucks crew anticipates them on Wednesdays. Merida is impressed that she hasn’t even had to order the last two weeks; the baristas had left their two drinks – the iced dirty chai and the passion fruit tea with extra pumps – on their usual table, with a clearly hand-made paper tent that said “Reserved” in Sharpie. The girls appreciated the kindness, though Merida wasn’t quite sure how Rapunzel felt about the free hand-outs. But nonetheless, the gesture was kind and the table wheelchair accessible.

“You know, if you can handle Starbucks, you can probably handle the jungle that is Corona High School...” Merida hinted.

“Oh my God, look at that puppy!” Rapunzel squealed (avoided) as a customer in a Yankees ball cap got out of his truck with an eight-week-old husky.

Foiled again.

* * * * *

Rapunzel has never had an orgasm before, but she thinks that the shudder that somehow ripples through her unfeeling body when she makes her first paint stroke since the accident is at least comparable.

Like everything else, she needs assistance. Greg’s watching her for the day, so it becomes clear that it’s his job to be the paintbrush guy. He looks relieved more than anything – she knows her dads tire of watching movies all day, alternating whose day it is to rot with their quadriplegic daughter (she knows deep down that they would never call it that – in fact, would probably protest her calling it that and give her a lecture about how much they love her, but she can’t help it). She and her dads have never been so sedentary. It’s the first summer that their garden doesn’t bloom. So the change of pace, when Rapunzel asks her dad to bring her paints down from her room, is welcome.

“Don’t watch,” Rapunzel instructs seriously. What if she can’t paint for shit?

“I won’t, I won’t. Promise.” Greg’s hands are raised in surrender.

“Blue,” she orders, and he dips the paintbrush and places the stylus in her mouth.

Rapunzel is transported. Utterly transported. The sight of her useless limbs disappears from her periphery as she gets close to the canvas, closer than she ever has been before. She even manages to let her tongue poke out around the paintbrush as she concentrates. Like she used to. This is magic.

The sky precipitates on the canvas in front of her. It’s true, she can’t shade like she used to, and she can’t wipe up mistakes as before either. Her strokes are bigger and less coordinated and sometimes shaky. But Rapunzel’s learned. She doesn’t expect things to be the same as before. And this is a miracle and a half.

Soon, she’s painted a sunset. Does it look like the work of a third grader? Absolutely. But is the sun visibly setting on the horizon? Does the red fade to orange fade to pink? Did she paint it with her very own brush, bringing abstract images from her mind’s eye onto the page? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Rapunzel could sing.

She sips her straw to move her chair backward and admire her work.

“You can look now, Dad.”

Obediently, Greg turns. As anticipated, tears floor his eyes; he lets out a shaky breath and claps a big, dark hand on Rapunzel’s shoulder. “You did it, ‘Punz,” he manages. Barely. “You did it, Pumpkin.”

Rapunzel is tired of holding back strong emotion. She lets the silent tears cascade down her cheeks. She did it.

 

The piece goes in the foyer. Merida’s eyebrows shoot up when she sees it the next day; she looks back and forth between the painting and Rapunzel’s whimsical expression comically, like she’s watching a tennis match as she puts the pieces together in her head.

“You...?” Merida teeters, heart throbbing. Rapunzel is amazing.

“Yeah,” Rapunzel says, shy and humble as ever. Merida moves forward and kisses her right on the mouth, brimming over with pride.

“Get a room, you two!” Jeff complains from the kitchen as Greg mimes puking in the sink. Typical.

 

Eugene, of course, tells her it’s no Sistine Chapel, but it’ll do. He grins like he’s won the lottery when he says it, though.

Rapunzel doesn’t have a night terror for three days in a row. Maybe being a quadriplegic for the rest of her life is...manageable. Perhaps, she thinks later, the image was not so much a sunset but a sunrise. 

* * * * *

_Weeks 9, 10, 11 and 12_

Rapunzel caves and decides to go back to school in the fall. She is determined to beat this, yes, and she is a bit of a know-it-all who can’t stay away from the classroom, it’s true, but the real reason that Rapunzel decides to go back to school is that she can’t imagine not going to school. The more she thinks about it, and the more those around her try to persuade her, the more she realizes that she simply cannot rot away in this house forever. She’s got a good head on her shoulders; in fact, it’s about all she has, now. She might as well use it.

Besides, the hallways of Corona High are routine. She doesn’t know who she would be without her studious grades, without studying late at night, without being a bit of a teachers’ pet. Her life has been measured less in days than in midterms, crispy autumn first days of school and illustrious snow days and winter break, soccer season and final exams and due dates and homework assignments and lab reports and anticipation of summer. Admittedly, this is a terrifying realization. How do we measure life passing us by without these milestones? Who would any of us be without the societal pressure and expectations to perform well in school to go to college to get a high-salary job to marry to... Well. She avoids the slippery slope of it altogether and decides that junior year will not be starting without her, thank you very much.

 _I’ll never raise my hand in class again, she thinks_. Huh.

School means several things. It means practicing the use of her Sip-and-Puff wheelchair so she doesn’t run herself into any walls at school. It means her dads spend hours on the phone talking to (and sometimes arguing with) the school principal and the school nurse. It means finding cute clothes online (thanks, Merida) that will covertly cover the parts of her that she won’t want anyone to see. It means locating all of the wheelchair accessible entrances on campus (there aren’t many). It means, potentially, a caretaker following her around from period to period to empty her bladder and help her take notes. It’s so much _work._

It also means eyes. Rapunzel knows this will be an issue, knows that the kids will gawk. High school was merciless _before_ she lost the use of her arms and legs; she cannot fathom what it will be like now. And she cannot _believe_ that Merida is willing to take on the gauntlet head-on, never the least bit worried about what the other kids will think about her for being a lesbian dating a disabled – oops, differently-abled, sorry Elsa – cripple. If it weren’t for Merida’s bravery, Rapunzel’s not sure that she herself would have the courage to go back to school.

Unlike Rapunzel’s fathers, who hesitate and fidget when Rapunzel declares that she will be returning to Corona in the fall, Merida’s face breaks out in a smile that could split the sky. It’s the happiest Rapunzel has seen her since the accident.

“Really? You’re gonna come back?!”

Rapunzel looks down. “If I don’t go back now, it’ll be so hard to ever make myself go back. Besides, I’ve been the talk of the town for the last month or so anyway – it’s not like it’s some big secret.”

“Omg. This is wonderful. We should fix our schedules so we have all our classes together!” Rapunzel is impressed that her announcement has warranted an ‘omg’ from Merida, but she can’t help but notice that her own enthusiasm doesn’t quite match Merida’s. It is begrudgingly that Rapunzel has agreed to try out school again.

Merida blabbers on about high school – _Oh, the teachers are going to be so happy to hear this. Can you imagine what Mr. Breck is gonna say when he hears you’ll be coming back? and y’know we should switch to sitting outside the cafeteria, the tables are a better height for your chair and I’m sure Belle’s a little miffed that she’s back out of the running for Valedictorian now that you’re coming back._

While Merida chatters away, Jeff and Greg steal nervous glances at one another with pursed lips. Rapunzel pretends not to notice. She might be the only teenager in the tri-state area whose parents _don’t_ want her to go to school. But she’s determined not to let them stand in her way.

* * * * *

It’s mid-morning, only two days since Rapunzel has formally re-enrolled at Corona High School. She’s been using her Sip-and-Puff chair to pace by the large front windows of the house, tiger-like as she slinks back and forth, impatient. Eugene has promised to come over today.

She’d texted him in the middle of the night with her secret. He was more than a little excited and happy to be of service. Rapunzel practically squeals when she sees his car – a seventeenth birthday gift from his mom – roll up in the driveway. The thing takes the cake for being the definition of secondhand – Rapunzel wonders idly if it’s really a third- or fourth-hand acquisition, but Eugene is stoked about the new car nonetheless and it makes Rapunzel’s chest bubble pleasantly to see her friends happy. Anything to get that look of pity out of their eyes.

Eugene wheels Rapunzel into the master bathroom. She considers protesting – she can move herself now, thank you very much – but she is nervous and emotional and lets Eugene take care of her. Taking care of herself all the time is a privilege she lost with the use of her other four limbs, and she’s starting to..come to terms with it. It comes with the territory. She is not weak for needing help.

“You sure?” Eugene flips the light switch and Rapunzel finds herself surrounded by her reflection – something she’s been pointedly avoiding since the day she came home from the hospital. She sucks in a deep breath and takes a second to recover.

“I am absolutely, 100% positive,” Rapunzel replies. Eugene doesn’t miss how long it takes her to reply.

“Merida’s gonna hate me for this,” he comments, running his hand through his hair, though she can tell it amuses him.

“One. Merida already hates you. Two. She doesn’t tell me what to do. Let’s do this.”

“If you say so.”

Rapunzel closes her eyes and sucks in another deep breath. She hears the scrape of the kitchen shears as the blades rub together. Once. Twice. Three times.

“Incoming,” Eugene narrates. Rapunzel keeps her eyes closed as she feels Eugene’s fingers in her hair. They navigate to a lock of hair. There’s a long pause – he’s letting her change her mind. When she doesn’t say anything, he whispers, “You’re beautiful, Rapunzel.” Snip. The long golden lock – hair she’s been growing out since she was four – crumples to the ground much the same way her body does in her nightmares when she relives the accident.

 _Snip. Snip. Snip._ Wince. Light-hearted comment from Eugene. _Snip._ Wince.

“Pardon my French, but holy fuck,” Eugene says when he finishes, spinning the chair around to face him. Her big green eyes open delicately, slowly, a sunrise. She looks nervous as she peeks up at him. “Damn,” he breathes. “I’d like to think I taught you that smolder,” he squeaks, coming back to himself and smiling crookedly at her.

“It looks okay?” she whispers, innocent.

“Like it was meant to be.”

She kisses his cheek. “Thank you, Flynn.”

 

Greg and Jeff stop in their footsteps, bags full of groceries after a particularly fruitful Costco run. They gawk at their daughter. Quadriplegia, depression, relationship issues – those are challenges, as a father. But a haircut? That’s something her dads can handle.

“‘Punzel! Look. At. You.” Grocery bags are dropped. Hugging and doting ensues. A few pats on the back make their way to Eugene. Both men are impressed that a straight white teenage boy could do such a good job. “Slayyyyy, Princess,” Jeff says, embarrassing Rapunzel until she turns tomato-red. “Dad!” she whines, the blush still creeping up her neck.

“Rapunzel, I’m serious, this looks fabulous. I love it. New year, new ‘do,” Greg praises, standing away from her and framing her in his hands like a photographer. The foyer is full of embarrassed giggles and compliments.

Her hair is now short – really short, sticking out in all directions, revealing her heart-shaped face and big dimples. She’s amazed by how light she feels. The breeze on the nape of her neck is wholly unfamiliar.

“Our baby’s growing up,” Greg smiles, getting all teary-eyed.

“That she is,” Jeff agrees.

Greg snaps a picture of Rapunzel and Eugene on his iPhone. Her dads are capturing milestones.

 

Merida, as expected, is not excited about the haircut and is REALLY not excited to find out that it’s Eugene’s doing.

“I swear I don’t mind it,” Merida lies, unconvincing. Her eyes are tight.

“Well, I love it,” Rapunzel replies unabashed.

“That’s good, ‘Punz. That’s what matters. Can I ask you a question, though?”

“That was a question.”

Merida snorts, but composes herself. “Why’d you cut it?” she asks.

Rapunzel thinks , clearly wanting to get her words right. It is evident that she has been thinking on this for a while when she begins to speak, slowly.

“When I go back to school, people are going to stare. They are, Mer, no matter how much you glare at them or how willing you are to fight them” – Merida smiles at that – “And they’re gonna have questions. And expectations. And judgements. I want them to know ... I’m not the same person I used to be. The Rapunzel I used to be is gone. I’m different now. My life is different. My abilities are different. My dreams are different. I have to have help to go to the bathroom, Mer. This...has been a rebirth. This is the woman I am now. This is who I am becoming. And I’m coming to terms with it, in my own way, and my own time.”

Merida nuzzles her clavicle, cuddling against Rapunzel in Rapunzel’s bed. She buries her face entirely in her neck, but she’s speechless. Instead, Merida presses light kisses to Rapunzel’s shoulder, up her neck, and finally on the lips. She doesn’t say a thing. She doesn’t have to.

Rapunzel hears her loud and clear.

* * * * *

‘Getting ready for school’ has taken on a whole new meaning. It doesn’t mean cereal sloshing in a bowl in your lap as your parent drives you to the parking lot swamped with first-time drivers. It doesn’t mean haphazardly brushing her teeth as the clock reads 7:21 am and school starts in nine minutes. It doesn’t mean launching yourself out the door with a backpack over one shoulder, half-open, as someone shouts “Have a good day!” after you.

No. ‘Getting ready for school’ for Rapunzel means a month-long preparation process for how to cope mentally, emotionally, and physically with the prospect of wheeling herself into the halls of Corona High. First, she has to figure out how to be a student again – a student in a system designed only for the success of those who are good at taking standardized tests, memorizing facts, and absorbing everything a teacher says the first time from a 70-minute lecture. A system designed for affluent, able-bodied students without learning disabilities or family emergencies or literally anything that could distract from full-time studies. These things, before, were so easy to Rapunzel, came naturally to her. Not so much anymore. Getting ready for school means how am I going to take notes and will my teachers give me extra time on the exams and how will I get in between classes on time? It’s realizing that there are way fewer entrances to the school when your way in requires a ramp. It’s realizing that the handicap button next to the door doesn’t actually keep the door open long enough for Rapunzel to get herself through it, and she can’t press the button by herself, and her chair is only barely narrow enough to fit through the door. It means not having the same focus that she used to be able to muster in the back of the classroom, because now she is thinking about the pins-and-needles feeling all over her body, and whether or not her bladder needs to be emptied, and whether or not the nurse is going to have to change her pad for her, and that her neck hurts, and her mouth is dry but she doesn’t want to have to ask someone to get water for her. It means focusing on trigonometry while she’s worried about her dads worrying too much, or the history of the Spanish-American War while all she can think about is the doctor’s appointment she has later that night. It means each and every teacher awkwardly trying to accommodate her in class and not knowing where to put her.

In order to get ready, her dads take her back and forth to doctor’s appointments. Her therapist asks her how she feels about going back to school. What she is nervous about. Rapunzel chokes on her own words during these appointments and mostly cries, which is not so promising if she’s trying to be back to school in less than a month. Some days she worries that no one will help her and that she’ll be all alone in a sea of open-mouthed stares and rumors. Other days, it’s the opposite – what if no one leaves her alone, and everyone assumes she is incapable of everything and they dote on her endlessly?

She texts Ariel, the light-hearted girl from physical therapy, who agrees to come over for dinner at Rapunzel’s house. This calms Rapunzel’s nerves. Here is someone who is living Rapunzel’s greatest fear, and has come out of it pleasant and upbeat and smiling.

She practices in her chair. Her dads, now comfortable leaving her alone for an hour at a time (especially since her tablet has a new Emergency Contact app), disappear occasionally for coffee or work or a moment to themselves, and Rapunzel races around the kitchen and the foyer until she is exhausted and has to catch her breath. She perfects the art of turning, the nuances of the Sip-and-Puff technology. She sobs quietly to herself when she runs into the counter for the thirteenth time in a row, takes a deep breath, and tries again.

She sits by the windows her dads have left open in the summer and let’s the fresh air seep into her bones. Merida makes sure to take her out into the sun, in all its majestic prowess. Rapunzel comes to learn intimately the healing power of nature. So much so, that when her fathers begin to realize how important the outdoors are to Rapunzel’s mental and physical health, they come home one day with a trunk-load of plants. Orchids and aloe, succulents and cacti, hanging plants and flowers. They assemble them aesthetically in Rapunzel’s room with her commanding them – “No, let’s put that one over here!” – and before long, her bedroom is alive and breathing. Pascal takes it upon himself to sniff each and every plant, twice. He sits down on his haunches next to her when he’s done and pants his approval.

“Good boy, Pascal.”

Now that they know, at least for now, that the condition is permanent, her dads and Merida begin to pack up her room upstairs and bring Rapunzel’s things into her bedroom on the first floor. They hang her posters – mostly maps and famous works of art – back up on the wall. They bring down her half-done artworks and sculptures, her paper-crane mobile and speaker system. Her computer is really no use to her now, so it goes in the garage, along with a few other items that she’ll likely never use again. A rubik's cube lands in the GARAGE SALE box. Her leftover clay gets donated to the high school arts program (always looking for donations). Her long board goes to Eugene, her roller blades to a girl on Craigslist. Her dads keep the softball glove from the third grade. They get rid of her old lamps and invest in lights that respond to verbal instructions to turn on and off, and Rapunzel cringes to think how much money her dads have spent on her since the accident. When they sell her bicycle, it stings a little, and Rapunzel is a recluse in her room for the rest of the day. They try not to let her see them getting rid of her things, but it’s somewhat inevitable.

On the plus side, her paints, brushes, and easels are relocated to her new bedroom, and Eugene has the genius to install a paint-brush storage bin in her bedroom wall at her eye level, allowing her to grab the paintbrushes with her teeth all by herself, and put them back, too. It’s an honest to God miracle. Someone always makes sure to keep a blank canvas on her easel stand and the paints easily accessible. It’s not perfect, but Rapunzel can make art just about whenever she wants, and she doesn’t have to ask anyone for permission.

She wishes that she could do away with the baby monitor that has become a permanent fixture on her bedside table and connects to the monitor on her fathers’ own nightstand, but that is a losing battle. They are always afraid for her. She can’t totally blame them, what with almost losing their only daughter, but still. Some privacy would be nice. It also wouldn’t hurt to see her dads have a little faith in her, but c’est la vie. As always, she makes due with what she’s given.

In late July, there’s a break-in in the neighborhood. Some dude in a mask stole the neighbor’s television and sound system and some pieces of jewelry. It sets everything back for a couple days, and her dads keep a frying pan of all things next to their bedside, and demand Rapunzel sleep with them for a few days. It certainly awakens something in all of them, to realize how...dangerous, this world can be for someone with limited mobility like Rapunzel. It’s dangerous enough to be a pretty girl at a fraternity party, but a pretty girl who can’t move? Who can’t get away? Who can’t fight back? Rapunzel and her dads shudder together at that one. They keep a closer eye on Rapunzel after that, which annoys the teenage girl inside of her but relieves some of the fear, too. She snuggles close to her dads that night.

 

Ariel does come over to dinner, as planned. Her parents join them. Ariel’s dad, Trenton, is a big older fellow, with broad shoulders and a voice like a tank. He’s gone entirely gray and has a long white beard and a boisterous sense of humor, and looks somewhat formal in his white button-down tucked into khakis. Trenton can’t seem to stop looking at Ariel with pride clearly blossoming in his chest. Ariel’s mom is a smaller, slim figure with beautiful tendrils of dark, curly hair and almond eyes. She wears an emerald-green summer dress and holds Trenton’s hand but looks a little nervous in the social situation. Rapunzel relates.

Ariel wheels herself over the ramp that’s been installed at the front door. “You have no idea how good it feels to not have to be lifted over the lip of someone’s front door step. Seriously, this is _wonderfu_ l,” she bleats happily, entering the home. She greets Rapunzel with a knowing hand on the shoulder, and Rapunzel appreciates the subtle acknowledgement. She wonders how many times in her life people will hold their hands out to introduce themselves to her before awkwardly realizing that Rapunzel is _not_ going to shake their hand. Not today, not ever.

Ariel’s parents do the same, which makes Rapunzel guess that she’d briefed them before they came over. It’s thoroughly appreciated. Suddenly, realization washes over Rapunzel – this is what it’s like to be around cognizant people aware and intentional around people with disabilities. She starts to smile, but frowns at the realization of how rare these sensitive and intentional interactions actually are. But she’ll be grateful for this one. She’ll appreciate every minute.

Her dads have prepared a fancy salmon dinner; it’s no secret that they are excellent cooks. Ariel and her parents exchange glances when they realize that the meal is indeed fish, but they don’t say anything about it, and eat happily and hungrily when dinner is served.

No one tries to pretend that this meal didn’t come together because of their daughters’ shared conditions, and so they are able to talk freely about it. Rapunzel’s dads – the amateurs in the room – ask Trenton and his wife all kinds of questions. What did they do about school? How did Ariel get paralyzed? What’s it been like? Have they tried group therapy? They ask normal questions, too, of course – what do they do for a living, have they always lived in New Jersey?

Ariel’s Dad works for the Coast Guard, real high up, and maintains the safety and health of the seas for almost the entire Eastern seaboard. This sets Greg into a flurry of questions about some of the cases he’s been working on regarding some of the beaches in the area. As an environmental lawyer, he’s been busy working on some of the Keystone XL paperwork and environmental impact statements and the fears of a spill on the coast. Ariel’s mother owns and operates a yoga studio in Westfield, which, she comments, was great for designing her own schedule and hours when Ariel first hit the diving board wrong. Of course, then they were in California, but they moved out East when Trenton got relocated.

While the grown-ups chit chat, Ariel and Rapunzel have their own conversation. Ariel tells Rapunzel about a website called Tumblr; Rapunzel’s never heard of it before and certainly hasn’t done much internet browsing since her fingers became unable to scroll on a mousepad. But Ariel insists that Rapunzel check out the site, she says there’s a really supportive community of people with actually progressive and mindful thoughts about able-bodiedness and differently-abled bodies.

“I learned a lot about how to talk about this from that website. And I learned that I wasn’t alone. I can show you, if you’ve got a computer somewhere?”

“It’s in the garage...”

“I’ll go get it.”

 

Rapunzel and Ariel thank Jeff and Greg for the meal and politely excuse themselves, disappearing into Rapunzel’s bedroom with the computer retrieved from the garage. Ariel asks for Rapunzel’s password (it’s PASCAL) which Ariel clucks at (“That’s too obvious”) but eventually the computer is humming to life and Ariel is logging into her account: a-fish-without-a-bicycle.

“What does that mean?” Rapunzel asked, wide-eyed and mesmerized by the force of life that radiates off of Ariel.

“You’ve never heard that phrase before?” Ariel asked, surprised. She ran a hand through her bright red hair, which tonight matched her bright red lipstick. Rapunzel shook her head no.

“It’s based off the saying, ‘A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.’ I think it’s funny, because, like, feminism, but also because sometimes I feel like a fish in a bicycle,” she finishes as she taps her chair, Rapunzel gives a half-hearted laugh. She likes the girl, but she certainly doesn’t always understand her.

It’s no matter, though, because soon Ariel is logged in and scrolling through her dashboard, and Rapunzel watches, focused, from behind.

“I mostly follow blogs about debunking ableism and stuff,” Ariel says to Rapunzel without taking her eyes off the screen.

“Able...ism? What’s that?” Rapunzel asks innocently. Ariel laughs kindly, ungluing her eyes to look directly into Rapunzel’s.

“I’m sure you already know, without knowing the word itself. Ableism, like racism or sexism, is discrimination against people with disabilities, or as I like to say, are differently abled.”

“I’ve heard that one before. ‘Differently abled,’” remarks Rapunzel, lost in thought. “My physical therapist prefers us to say that. She says it’s about the mindset.”

“Well, it is!” Ariel replies. “I mean, it’s kind of – pardon my German – but it’s kind of fucked up that our society has a definition of ‘normal’ and everyone who deviates from it is automatically at a disadvantage. I mean, there’s no default for being human.”

“I guess you’re right. I never thought of it that way, when I could stand.”

“Me neither,” Ariel assures.

“It seems like you’re pretty good at standing up for yourself now, though,” Rapunzel jokes, and Ariel rolls her eyes at the pun.

“I’m genuinely trying. I want to be a human rights lawyer when I grow up. Once I finish this year of community college, I’m off to Rutgers.”

But the moment is lost, and they are scrolling on Tumblr again. Ariel helps Rapunzel set up an account (PunzelPaints) and hits the follow button, so that they can be virtually connected when it’s too much trouble to pack up their chairs in their respective vans and actually meet up anywhere in person.

Rapunzel is incredibly amused at the website and taken aback by how...progressive people on the site seem to be. There are disabilities she had never really thought of. While hers is excruciatingly visible, there were so many others that weren’t. Suddenly, she wondered how many kids at school were taking ADHD medication, or who couldn’t finish their homework in time because they were dyslexic. There’s a great deal of talk about sexuality, and how people with disabilities tend to get written off as asexual by the assumption of able-bodied people. She thinks, briefly, of the last time she and Merida had made out (yesterday) and cringes. Do people assume she’s now an entirely un-sexual being because a wave damaged one of her vertebrates?

Ariel has given her a lot to think about.

But Ariel pulls her out of her thoughts as she points to the screen. “Look at this one!”

 It reads: "I love pirates because they have no concept of ableism. oh you have no leg? here have a peg leg. no hand?? well guess we gotta put a hook on that, give those sons of bitches a surprise. Blind in one eye, put an eyepatch on no one fucking cares, you're deaf??? go man the canons you glorious bastard. They don't care if you're disabled bcus as long as you can fuck shit up they literally don't fucking care.

The response reads: I never thought about it this way. This is beautiful.

Rapunzel snorts unapologetically at that one, and Ariel helps her pull up Tumblr on her tablet so she can continue her scrolling later.

Eventually, the parents – done with small talk and a little wine-drunk – come to fetch the girls from Rapunzel’s bedroom, and they fail entirely to hide their pleasure that the girls are bonding and giggling. With big smiles, the adults hug and agree to do this again as the light is dimming and the night grows long. Ariel pats the back of Rapunzel’s neck by way of saying goodbye, and then she is wheeling herself behind her parents, stopping only once to look back and wave at Rapunzel and her fathers.

The evening leaves a good taste in everyone’s mouth.

* * * * *

That night, Rapunzel doesn’t have the same nightmare as usual. The one with the black wave that morphs into a black snake that sneaks up behind her. The one where she crumples to a chorus of screams from all of her loved ones, and Merida is there with blood on her hands. The one where she wants to reach out, to assure everyone that she is okay, to calm the chaos, and then she finds that she cannot move, that she is trapped, that she is underwater–

No. Tonight, Rapunzel dreams of the full spectrum of mobility. Rapunzel is fully functioning.

She’s not doing anything exciting, in this particular dream. Just walking. She’s on a dirt road, with wildflowers growing thick along the sides, and she’s barefoot and she’s walking. She doesn’t know where she’s going, has no plan, nothing to be late for. She just goes, and goes. One foot in front of the other.

It’s hard to put her finger on the right word for the feeling she has in her chest when she wakes up in the morning, groggy and horizontal until her dads come to dress her and place her in her chair for the day. Is she nostalgic? Perhaps. Bittersweet? Again, maybe. It was...nice. In a way, she gets to walk again. After all, for a dreamer, night’s the only time of day.

From then on, Rapunzel dreams herself almost nightly into a world where the accident never took place, where she can run and jump and sculpt and cup Merida’s breasts and climb trees and applaud and hold open doors and pick flowers.

* * * * *

Before she knows it, it’s mid-August and it’s the Monday before the first day of school. Merida had anticipated the meltdown ahead of time and comes over early, equipped with ice cream and a bouquet of daisies. She has the garage code to the house now (Jeff and Greg have become far more generous with letting people in and out of the house – anyone who brings a smile to Rapunzel’s face, in their opinion, should have been here yesterday). Merida lets herself in quietly and tiptoes to Rapunzel’s bedroom, creaking open the white wooden door and perching herself on the end of her bed. It’s early – the light is only just hitting the bed and scattering striped light from the window blinds onto Rapunzel’s relaxed face.

Merida kisses her forehead, sets the daisies on the nightstand, and goes into the kitchen to put the ice cream in the freezer before it melts.

There, she runs into Jeff and Greg, who have – for the umpteenth time this summer – both taken off work today to help Rapunzel get ready for school. They, too, are armed with Rapunzel’s favorite movies and have made her breakfast and yes, even coffee. Merida realizes that without her really noticing, they have become incredibly close over the last three months; they’ve become like fathers to her. They ask about soccer, and about her friend Jasmine. They ask about her mom and how things are going at home. They ask about her brothers, who are starting middle school this year. They chat until the expected, “I’m up!” chirps out of the baby monitor that Rapunzel so despises, and the men offer to let Merida get her up. She smirks and slinks off into Rapunzel’s room.

“Mornin’, sweetheart,” Merida practically sings, voice dripping in unusually thick Scottish this particular morning. “How’d ya sleep?”

“Perfectly,” Rapunzel yawns, closing her eyes briefly. Even though she’s just woken up and surely has a bad case of sleep breath, Merida is floored with how graceful she looks. “What’re you doing here so early?”

“I missed you.” Rapunzel looks skeptical but doesn’t protest when Merida climbs into bed with her. In fact, today she decides to sit on top of her.

“What are you doing?” Rapunzel laughs, as Merida sits comically on her hips, still over the covers.

“Sitting,” Merida grins.

“I gathered that,” Rapunzel chimes, shaking her head. “Come here,” she pouts, furrowing her brow. She wants kisses, dammit.

“And what if I don’t?” Merida teases.

“Come heeeerrrreee,” Rapunzel whines.

“But I’m so comfortable.”

“Please?”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’ll never kiss you ever again ever,” Rapunzel threatens, flirting back.

“Why don’t you just come over here, huh?” Merida jokes, and a look of genuine horror washes over Rapunzel’s face. She flattens.

“Oh, God, Rapunzel, I– I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have–” Merida backtracks, ashamed and realizing she’d taken the joke too far. Because Rapunzel can’t come to her. The way it looks, she won’t be able to come to her for the rest of their lives. She takes a calming breath, so she doesn’t stutter when she apologizes. She looks to Rapunzel’s eyes, but they’re cast down and full of tears.

“Rapunzel, I am so sorry for what I said. That was incredibly insensitive and I really wasn’t thinking. I love you and that was so unfair of me,” she whispers, guilt filling her as she begins to untangle herself from where she is straddling Rapunzel.

“No – no, stay,” Rapunzel finally says, as Merida is almost off of her. Merida freezes. “I know you didn’t mean it. Like that. It just. Caught me off guard.” She swallows deeply. “Come kiss me, Mer.”

And Merida leans back onto Rapunzel, gently crawls forward on her hands and kisses Rapunzel sweet and tender, lips brushing with almost no pressure, over and over. I love you. I’m sorry.

They still have a lot of learning to do.

 

Eventually, Merida has brushed away whatever oncoming tears there were and is pushing Rapunzel out into the kitchen where the five of them – Rapunzel, Merida, Greg, Jeff, and the ever-present Pascal who sits patiently under the table waiting for scraps with his tail going off like a speedboat rudder – enjoy breakfast. Jeff feeds Rapunzel, matching her bite for bite, and the coffee is delicious and sweet. It’s an overcast morning, the kind that makes you want to bundle up in your biggest blankets and curl up on the couch with Earl Grey tea and a delicious novel, and the house is warm and Rapunzel’s favorite people are surrounding her, and everything feels perfect and good and she wants this to last forever–

And then she realizes it _can’t_ last forever because she has _school_ tomorrow. And then _school tomorrow_ makes her practically choke on the egg whites that Jeff has just given her and she balks.

And then the real tears come. The flood. She is a mess. The tissues are pulled out. There is petting. There are strangled sobs. There are wrenched hearts.

“I can’t, I can’t, _I can’t,_ ” she cries. She is a broken record. She is broken.

Merida, Jeff, and Greg cry along with her. What can you say to a young woman who cannot move anything below her neck? To a young woman who is about to embark into a sea of the most judgmental, shallow breed of humans on Earth: teenagers? To a young woman who just one last time wants to stand up from her chair, and put her fingers on the crisp ivories of the piano she hasn’t touched since she quit taking lessons in the seventh grade? There is nothing to say, sometimes. Today is one of those times.

When everyone has exhausted themselves, they do finally curl up on soft brown leather couches with hot tea and Pascal curled at their feet, and they watch When Harry Met Sally. Rapunzel falls asleep in Merida’s lap, a scratchy Navajo blanket draped over her.

It is a bad day. Not even Butter Pecan ice cream can salvage it.

 

The one thing that _does_ make it better is that Elsa, the wonder woman of a physical therapist that the family, especially Rapunzel, has grown close to, has offered to be Rapunzel’s caretaker for the first week of school. It’s not permanent – she does need to go back to her practice – but for easing the transition, she has offered to accompany Rapunzel. Eventually, a nurse will be assigned to Rapunzel, but until then, she is grateful that someone she _knows_ will be emptying her colostomy bag at school.

 _Emptying her colostomy bag at school_. It brings on a fresh wave of tears.

“What’s the point?” she wails, tossing her head back. “I can’t take art classes anymore. I can only get into the building from the East doors and all of my classes will be on the other side of the building. I can’t even bubble in the answers on my exams! It’s not like I’ll be able to take the SAT. I can’t go to college in this chair. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. We’re kidding ourselves with this whole school thing. I can’t go tomorrow. I just can’t.”

“Baby girl, you _can_ ,” Greg says, at the same time Jeff says, “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to, lovebird.” They look at each other, equally lost as their quad daughter sobs into the shoulder of her just-as-lost girlfriend. They are, altogether, a lost bunch. There’s not exactly an easy-to-follow guide for these kinds of situations. You just ride them out, take them in stride, and do the best that you can.

Today, the best they can do is cry. Because the situation fucking sucks. And they’re not going to pretend that it doesn’t.

 

Merida rides her Vespa back to her own house around 7 pm. Her parents want her home so she can get a good night’s sleep and gather her things for tomorrow, including the book report she had to prepare for the first day of school ( _Baloney_ , she thinks) on To Kill A Mockingbird. She knows Rapunzel’s listened to it on the iPod Belle gave her back in the hospital, but they hadn’t discussed it. She wonders if Rapunzel’s done the report. She honestly can’t seem to get the girl off her mind.

Tired from a day of crying, Rapunzel retreats to her bedroom and scrolls on Tumblr for a bit. The posts she sees only make her feel worse, and then even more nervous for the following day.

She comes across a Twitter screenshot from @amaditalks: #solidarityisfortheablebodied when discussions rarely if ever mention the higher risk of sexual violence if you're disabled (men too).

So instead, she asks her dads to put her to bed early. Still, she can’t sleep, and spends what feel like hours staring at her ceiling, anxiety raising its ugly head in the pit of her stomach.

 

Elsa drives over in a white convertible early in the morning. She knocks gently at the front door, which despite being but a quiet rapt on the wood, sends Pascal into a fit of howls, and soon everyone is awake. Jeff answers the door while Greg jets over to Rapunzel’s room to let her know that the doctor is in.

Elsa and Jeff enter the bedroom behind Greg, but Rapunzel is still in bed. And she refuses to leave it.

“Rapunzel, we talked about this. Going back to school is the right decision for you. And you know it, too. You’re too brilliant to sit in this house all day and wait around. Your father and I would bore you to tears. ‘Punz, many quadriplegics have gone onto college! I was just reading the other day about a quad who got his MBA at Harvard. Harvard, ‘Punzel,” Jeff says sweetly, sitting at the foot of her bed.

“Are you doubting if you can do it?” Elsa asks, her voice trained to be soothing.

“I just...can’t,” Rapunzel says, wishing she could explain but out of words. “There are too many what-ifs. I can’t.”

“Maybe this was a mistake...” Greg begins, giving Rapunzel a sort of sideways shoulder massage as he joins her in the queen-sized bed. She’s been propped up on some pillows.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily a mistake,” Elsa says thoughtfully, now the only one standing in the small room. “It just takes time. Maybe today wasn’t the right day.”

Rapunzel sighs. She _does_ want to go to school, though. She’s imagining the freshman, bumbling around lost and walking on the wrong side of the hall. The seniors, fist bumping and hollering across the hallways and hugging after a long summer, feeling like they now rule the school. The football players, surely wearing their jerseys on the first day, a head above everyone else. The girls on the soccer team, already carrying their gym bags since practice started weeks ago. The lockers, the smell of freshly opened boxes of pencils, the cafeteria. The art studio and Dr. Breck and the newly painted mural at the front entrance of the school that Rapunzel had admired in its many stages. In fact, she’d stopped to talk to the artist who was working on it so many times that they were on a first name basis. Rapunzel wonders whether she’ll ever see her again.

But she _can’t_ go back to school. If the freshman can hardly barrel through the hallways, how will she ever survive? What if her classes are upstairs? What if her colostomy bag breaks in the middle of calculus? How can she do an equation without writing it out neatly in the organized folds of lined paper?

High school is not fit for the differently abled. That much she knows.

But is it worth fighting the system? To go and sit behind a desk (no, she’ll have to move the desk out of the way entirely with the big chair) and use her existence as a form of protest. To show that despite the institutionalized ableism and the lies behind No Child Left Behind, she can still succeed. That she can go from class to class and do her homework and ace her tests despite the chair and the immobility, the headaches and the fact that she can’t even fucking feed herself anymore.

Rapunzel is too torn and too weepy to do anything about it this morning. Greg and Jeff make attempts to force her out of bed, to force her to go to school the way many a parent does when their child sleeps through their alarm and refuses to crawl out of bed. But this is different. Elsa beckons them into the hall, but Rapunzel already has a good idea of what Elsa is telling them. Her body, her choice. If she isn’t ready to go to school today, she isn’t ready. Just because they can technically make her go to school, doesn’t mean they should take advantage of the fact that she can’t fight back. Of course, they nod in agreement.

Rapunzel collects herself and returns her breathing to normal by the time they come back in, but the sight of her dads brings the tears right back on.

It is one of the hardest days of her life.

She hates herself for not being brave. Merida would have been brave. Merida would have taken the goddamn school bus and bragged to everyone and their mother about how great the chair was, how alive she felt and how grateful she was to be alive. She would have floored them all.

But Rapunzel isn’t Merida. She is shy and nervous. She is timid and good. She is a paint stroke on a winter day, not a comet of might in the heat of summer. And today, she needs to stay in bed and cry.

 _Rock, meet bottom_ , she thinks to herself humorlessly.

Perhaps she is finally mourning the use of her legs, her wrists, her elbows and toes. It is finally hitting her that this condition is not for the summer, it is not conquerable, it is only manageable. It is not heroic and it is not tragic, it just is. This is her body, and this is what it is capable of. Looking down at her limbs – skinny and weightless from lack of use – she suddenly recognizes them as hers. And she cries the heartbreaking cry of healing, and at last, she sees the light.

 

She spends the entire day in her room. Her dads bring her food and water and change the things that need changing. Elsa stays, too, already having the day off, and chats with Rapunzel whenever she has calmed enough to maintain a conversation through her hiccups. At one point, Elsa stretches her on the bedroom floor. For the better part of the afternoon, Elsa brushes and plays with Rapunzel’s hair, managing to thread the daisies Merida’d brought over yesterday into Rapunzel’s blond strands that are getting just long enough to braid again. The girl’s hair grows fast.

Merida does not come over, and Rapunzel worries about her. Merida’d expected her to be in class today. There are no text messages, no emails (except from her teachers and the principal, but those emails went to her dads.)

At 3:15 pm, fifteen minutes after school gets out, the doorbell rings. No one is there, but a small envelope rests on the doormat that says “Wipe Your Paws.” The envelope isn’t sealed, and Greg brings it inside. It isn’t labeled.

“Rapunzel, it’s for you,” he calls, but brings it to her regardless.  
  
Inside the envelope is the thin gold chain of the black bear necklace that Rapunzel gifted to Merida all those months ago, the pendant swinging back and forth in Greg’s hand. “There’s a note,” he says.

_For better luck tomorrow._  
_Love,_  
_MER_

Jeff unclasps the necklace and puts it around Rapunzel’s neck. And the crying starts all over again.

* * * * *

Rapunzel wakes on Wednesday morning before her alarm clock, with dry eyes and determination like her fathers have never seen before. They make no comment about her change in disposition as she instructs them – _brush my teeth, please; I want to wear that shirt; no, Dad, the other pink bra!_ She is ready for school this time when Elsa knocks at the door, dressed in a long black maxi skirt that hides the deteriorated muscles of her calves and the awkward angle at which her feet now sit. She’s wearing a striped tank top of all rainbow colors, an elegant watch that her dads gifted her freshman year. Her hair is brushed and short and golden as ever, still sticking up in parts at funny but humbling angles.

“Is our daughter a ten or what?” Greg asks, throwing an elbow into Jeff’s ribs.

“Gross!” Rapunzel and Jeff say in unison as they load her and the chair up the ramp and into the back of the car. Elsa rides in the back with Rapunzel. She holds Rapunzel’s hand the whole way to school.

Unloading in the parking lot is unpleasant to say the least. She is so visible. There is no stealth to being a quadriplegic, no blending in or camouflage. All inconspicuousness that she had built up in the last two years of high school by sitting in the back of her classes and hiding away in the art studio where she thrived was lost when the wave knocked her head into the sandbar.

She is bright red and sweating egregiously (thank God she went with a tank top today), but she is here, at the high school, and she is okay. Her dads hug her tightly, struggling to let go and terrified of what the day will bring for their first and only child. But they have to let her go, and so they wave (forever) until Rapunzel and Elsa are out of sight and have disappeared into the double doors of the school.

Elsa takes her to homeroom, but Rapunzel doesn’t register where they are going at all as they screech through the halls. They’re early, but most of the student body is here already, crowding the hallways and chatting in small groups that stand around in circles waiting for the bell to ring.

Some people notice her and look away, trying not to stare. Others fail miserably and look on with gaping mouths. Then people start coming up to her. Mulan, the president of the Asian American Student Association who has only talked to Rapunzel twice comes up and welcomes her back to Corona High. Aladdin, the president of the student body whose never once come down from his lofty pedestal of popularity, actually separates himself from a group of friends and wriggles his way through the students to talk to her.

“Hi, Rapunzel! I’m Aladdin. I don’t know if we’ve talked before, but I just wanted to say, uh, it’s really cool of you to come back. I hope we hang out this year.” He runs his hands through his long black hair awkwardly, but Rapunzel smiles.

“Thanks, Al. I’ll see ya around.”

Merida fucking _barrels_ down the hall when she spots Rapunzel and practically knocks the chair over with her excitement.

“You came!!!!” she cheers, pecking Rapunzel on the cheeks and grinning from ear to ear. She’s practically hopping up and down as she joins Elsa in walking Rapunzel down the hall.

Others come up to them as well, but less so now that Merida’s joined Rapunzel and she looks less out of place.

“I see you’re wearing my necklace,” she smarts, side-eyeing Rapunzel happily with her eyebrows raised.

“I needed a little extra bravery,” Rapunzel smiles back, suddenly glad to be back.

Due to her condition and the fact that this school year is more or less a test run, Rapunzel is only taking four classes instead of the usual six, and gets to leave at lunchtime. Four hours and fifteen minutes. She just has to get through four hours and fifteen minutes.

They go smoothly. Or at least, as smoothly as she could have hoped for. She likes having Elsa, with her calm big-sister-like presence and cool hands and bleach-white hair around to take care of her, but she’s annoyed that the boys in the class seem to like it more. Rapunzel is wholly unimpressed with their whispers of how hot Rapunzel’s helper is, and she wishes they knew that she could HEAR THEM THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Rapunzel sees the school with new eyes. She notices, for example, that Tarzan, the outdoorsy hipster whose been nothing but nice to her the last few years, wears hearing aids. And Alice was a Type I diabetic. Rapunzel saw her prick her finger at lunch one week. She’d never noticed before. It’s a small thing, but relief courses through her. She’s not the only one.

There are frustrating things, too. She hears a girl in her AP U.S. History class call the boy sitting next to her a “retard” before the teacher has started the day’s lesson, and she is appalled. Has it always been this bad? Had she always been so oblivious?

What would the Tumblr people say about this?!

It happens again in her next class; a boy from the field hockey team is teasing another guy from the team, and he says, “Dude, if you’re gonna ask her out, just do it! Don’t be so spineless, bro.”

To which his friend looked directly at Rapunzel and then straight into his lap and turned bright red. A small part of Rapunzel wanted to hit him. She briefly considers texting Merida to do so for her, but decides against it. And so begins her saga of choosing her battles and deciding when to stick up for herself.

Her teachers had all made arrangements with her dads ahead of time, so none of them were shocked when Rapunzel was wheeled in by Elsa. They’d already made the appropriate space and accommodations in the classroom and seemed happy to do so. Rapunzel had an excellent reputation with the teachers and she’s certainly grateful for it now. No one forces her to introduce herself to the class or any of that bullshit that keeps freshman awake the night before their first day of school.

It’s...not so bad.

* * * * *

The first week of school is a success. It hadn’t taken very long for Rapunzel to realize that while she might be the only kid at school in a wheelchair, she’s certainly not the only one held back by disabilities. Quasimodo wears a back brace that you can only just make out through the sweatshirts that he wears every single day of the year. And Tinkerbell, the cheerleader, takes Xanax for her anxiety, which Rapunzel overhears in the hallway. And yet here they all are. Still pushing on. Still good. Still okay.

It’s nice having Elsa around, who is kind and familiar, but starting Monday she’ll be paired with a new nurse; she tries not to think about it. That first week, she is comforted by Elsa’s whispers in her ear, the surprisingly hilarious and almost constant commentary her physical therapist keeps up throughout the school day.

After school on Friday, Rapunzel visits Mr. Breck, who smiles like he’s seeing the sun for the first time.

“My, Rapunzel! You’ve come back, the rumors are true! How are you, dear?”

Rapunzel uses her straw to control the tablet attached to her chair and shows Mr. Breck the paintings she’s done at home – her dads have taken pictures of them and uploaded them to her camera roll. She’s even started posting them on Tumblr with tags and short entries about them.

“My oh my, Rapunzel, these are incredible. You’ve learned to paint with just your mouth?! You simply cannot take the art out of the girl, I tell you!” he laughs incredulously, glowing.

“This one’s about how I felt, at first. I wanted to paint what it means to feel utterly helpless.”

The painting is of a warped, wheelchair-like machine growling at the viewer, jagged metal teeth curled up in a fearsome snarl. It is metallic and blue, save for the dripping splatters of red paint.

“I see, yes. Wow. Such great use of cool colors. Marvelous. Truly emotional.”

“And..okay...here, this one is of my friend, Merida. I painted this when I realized she still wanted to be my friend.” The picture only barely resembles Merida. It is a painting of a pulsing heart fit to burst, with the silhouette of a woman incorporated beautifully into the pulmonary artery.

“I painted the beach, too. Where it happened.” This one is a beach at night. The moon, however, is underwater.  
  
“This is a painting of my dads. It was just for fun. I’m having trouble getting people’s faces right. The details are harder now.”

“Ah yes, I think I met them at the gallery showing last year. I can see the resemblance. Jeff and Gary, was it?”

“Greg,” Rapunzel corrects, smiling.

It’s easy to share her art with Mr. Breck. He is the cutest old man who lets his students bear their hearts into their work, their feelings and abstract thoughts. He lets them cope with their parents’ divorce or the omnipresent bullying or the fact that they don’t have a date to prom or their parents just lost their jobs or their sisters just got diagnosed with stage 2 leukemia unquestioned. He doesn’t ask. He lets the art tell. Mr. Breck doesn’t ask a single question about how the adjustment to the chair and the quadriplegic life has been, because she is telling him through her work. And he critiques it no differently than he did before. He doesn’t sit there and praise her because now it is a miracle that she can make art at all. He doesn’t pity her for being in the chair. He tells her that she’s missed some of the shadowing on the heart. That she should really revisit the color wheel to improve the aesthetic of Alone #2. That the lines are too hard or the paint strokes too thick. In short, he treats her the same as he always has, and Rapunzel leaves, feeling like a piece of her has been restored.

 

Her dads finally ask about school at dinner on Friday night, though it’s weird for them all to be having dinner on a Friday night during the school year; From January to the last day of school, Rapunzel’d had almost every single Friday night dinner with Merida’s family. It was tradition. They’d started setting the table for her by default. But it is tiring to hoist Rapunzel in and out of the van too many times in a day, and Merida’s mother already works night shifts and no one there is fully equipped to empty Rapunzel’s bladder and their front door doesn’t have a ramp and mostly, Merida is afraid someone in her family would accidentally say something offensive or wrong or triggering, and so Rapunzel finds herself amidst the noises of forks scraping on plates at a quiet dinner with Jeff and Greg.

“So, on a scale of 1 to 10,” Greg begins with a mouth full of mashed potatoes, “How glad are you that you decided to go back to school?”

Rapunzel thinks on it, opening her mouth for a forkful of her own mashed potatoes incoming from Jeff. After she chews and swallows, she replies, “Six.”

“Hey, that’s no so bad,” Jeff comments.

“Not at all,” Greg responds.

“I’m just so...irritated. Disappointed? No, irritated. With the school, but also with myself. I don’t feel as different as people make me feel. I feel like...until this accident, I never realized that our world was, like, designed only for able-bodied, straight white heterosexual cisgendered people to succeed in,” Rapunzel frowns. “It’s a lot harder to get through this world if you’re not.”

“Woah baby girl, that’s some big talk. Where’d you hear all that from?”

“I’ve been browsing the internet,” Rapunzel shrugs, allowing gravity to let her shoulders fall back into their relaxed position.

“Well, you’re certainly right about some of it, love. The world is stacked against us. Hell, you’ve got two interracial dads. The cards were stacked against you before any of this even started,” Greg says, suddenly honest. The mood in the room has sobered.

“And I give _you_ guys a bad name. ‘Don’t worry, gay parents won’t have gay children.’ Think again,” Rapunzel laughs with disbelief. “I just celebrated eight months with my immigrant girlfriend.”

“We’re admittedly not America’s favorite family,” Jeff says, half-amused and half-sad.

“Well, we’re my favorite family,” Rapunzel replies.

* * * * *

The man running for President of the United States mocks a disabled reporter on live television. Rapunzel nearly throws up with disgust. She calls Merida immediately, who cries for Rapunzel on the phone with her.

The man running for President of the United States hardly suffers any consequences for the atrocious action. No one says anything about it at school. Jeff and Greg bake their daughter cookies and let her take the day off of school.

* * * * *

Things feel...normal. Rapunzel feels normal. Even Merida feels normal. There is something about routine that is simply comforting to the human condition. School is five days a week. The new nurse who becomes Rapunzel’s at-school caretaker is named Jessie. She’s from Texas and has a charming Southern drawl, a lot of enthusiasm, and bronze hair. She takes to Rapunzel quite nicely, though not as nicely as she and Elsa get along. It takes time to build these relationships and to understand their power structures and what it means to be wholly vulnerable with practically a stranger. But Jessie is around, and she comes to the front door every weekday morning at the same time, and that becomes normal and expected. Pascal waits by the window. Breakfast alternates between oatmeal, cereal, and scrambled eggs. School bells ring at the same time every day. The students sit in the same desks. Mondays suck and Fridays can’t come fast enough. There is homework to groan about and paintings to complete at odd hours of the night and dinner at 6 pm and therapy on Sunday afternoons.

She still goes to Elsa twice a week. They’ve pretty much given up on all of the exercises that might prepare Rapunzel to walk again. Walking again is, for now, an unlikely and out of reach pipe dream. There is no use embarrassing herself on their machines and equipment when she still can’t even move her index finger. She tries, though, in secret. Every night, before she goes to bed. Just tries to move an index finger. It doesn’t work, but Rapunzel believes in miracles. She is a hopeful young woman. New research suggests that spinal cord repair and regeneration is possible. But the doctors are ‘working on it.’ So for now, she must be patient. It is a thing that, luckily, she is becoming good at.

Rapunzel sits by Merida in two of her classes, Belle in her third period, and Jasmine, Mulan, and Tarzan in calculus. Again, there is routine. She knows where she is going to sit. The people around her are helpful and kind, for the most part. Her teachers are willing to help. She skips exam days and comes in after school to take them orally. While she can’t exactly get away with texting in class like the other kids at school, she feels pretty normal about it all the same. It’s just...a new normal.

It’s not weird anymore to have someone feed her at meals. It’s not weird for her dads to hear the sucking and blowing sounds from the living room and know that Rapunzel is probably just sending a text. The baby monitor stops being weird. She even becomes open to the idea of training Pascal to be a service dog. Her dads start looking into trainers online.

The process of loading Rapunzel in and out of the van gets easier. Having Merida or her dads or Jessie or Dr. White or Elsa bathe her no longer makes her blush and want to cry out in embarrassment. In fact, many people have seen her naked. For Rapunzel, intimacy no longer stems from who gets to lay eyes on her naked body, like she always thought it would after watching the movies and reading about love. She doesn’t have discretion any longer over whose eyes rake over her. Now, true nudity is about baring her soul – her deepest thoughts, her greatest fears, the feelings locked into that still-pulsing, still-beating heart – only to those she lets in. Intimacy is not lost. It’s just changed.

 

After the election, and after Pocahontas, Corona High’s resident environmental activist, had roadtripped with her family to camp briefly at Standing Rock with the Water Protectors, a beautifully coincidental re-assignment of seats in first period put Rapuzel and Pocahontas next to one another.

The girls get to talking. They follow one another on Tumblr, a site Rapunzel is now practically addicted to (and has even sucked Merida online). Eventually the topic of conversation turns to activism, and solidarity, and sisterhood. Rapunzel explains to Pocahontas what it feels like to exist as a quadriplegic in society, and Pocahontas explains what it feels like to exist as an indigenous teenager in an American high school, and they start to realize that their existence is resistance and their stories and experiences are not so far apart from one another.

It is after a particularly non-chemistry-related discussion during second hour chemistry about how capitalism values human beings solely for their ability to do work and labor, which therefore discounts the value of the disabled, despite their capacity for many other kinds of emotional and physical labor, and despite the fact that human rights language says that all human beings have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not just the able-bodied, that Rapunzel and Pocahontas realize that they ought to do something about all of this.

They start holding meetings after school on Mondays. Some days they talk about punching Nazis. Other days, about how its problematic how the Standing Rock Water Protectors had to tag onto the environmentalist movement because people care more about trees and birds than about indigenous lives. Some days it is about the latest black man who has been shot to death with both hands up. Merida chimes in about immigration and Syrian refugees.

They talk at length about the injustices in the world and how to combat them.

Merida shows up whenever soccer practice is cancelled. Belle starts coming regularly, as does Mulan. Quasimoto, who has eaten every cafeteria lunch by himself for the last three years because he looks funny and has a lisp and is teased about what he’s hiding under those ubiquitous sweatshirts, starts showing up to meetings, too. He’s quiet, and chews his bottom lip for almost the entire time, but he is never late and stays the duration of the meeting.

* * * * *

In mid-October, Merida’s soccer games start up, and Jessie is willing to take Rapunzel to watch the games on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school. Rapunzel again feels normal, watching her girlfriend tear up the soccer field, scoring goals and earning the most high fives of any of her teammates (Rapunzel’s counted). She won’t be surprised when Merida gets nominated as team captain their senior year.

Wednesday Starbucks is impossible with the workload of junior year, the added medical complications, and Merida’s soccer schedule, so instead of weekly after-school dates, Merida takes it upon herself to pick up the dirty chai (no longer iced as the leaves begin to change) and the Passion Fruit tea with extra pumps of raspberry on her way to school, so that she and Rapunzel can slurp them happily in first hour.

Normal things happen. Homecoming rolls around. And Halloween. Even Thanksgiving. Life...keeps going. The world is not going to wait for anyone, wheelchair or not. For some reason, Rapunzel had not expected that the world would keep turning, and it does, and she is thrilled that she is alive to see it.

* * * * *

Rapunzel stops using the phrase “wheelchair-bound” and instructs those around her to do the same. “I’m not bound to the wheelchair. I get out of it all the time. To sleep, to bathe, to sit on the couch. It adds a passivity to being quad. Like things just happen to me. Like I’m more immobile than I actually am. I’m not bound into any kind of chair.” The internet is teaching her a lot.

* * * * *

Belle and Rapunzel have partnered up to work on practice test questions for their upcoming American history exam, when they overhear the one group of three – Gaston of all people and two girls Rapunzel doesn’t know very well – adamantly discussing a new Netflix TV show that Marvel has released.

“It’s super dope. Did you see the part where he saves the kids from the Russians? That fight scene is so badass.”

“I know, right? Daredevil is such a cool superhero. I love the concept, too. Blind guy saves the world. It’s kind of brilliant, y’know? To take a disability and turn it into an ability.”

Rapunzel and Belle make eye contact and small, synchronized smiles appear on their lips. They know that their Monday meeting group....club....whatever they are – will be watching and analyzing this curious new TV show.

 

They watch the first episode the very next Monday in an empty classroom. It’s Belle, of course, who gets the projector up and running. Rapunzel has invited Ariel, who she thinks will take kindly to these little gatherings.

The theme song comes to life on the projector, and the sound is terrible but it doesn’t matter. The main character is blind. He can’t see a _damn_ thing. He walks with the seeing-eye cane and everything. And by night, he beats the shit out of bad guys. Even Rapunzel gets a crush on the guy. She and Merida finish the entire first season, snuggled on Rapunzel’s couches, in a week.

A superhero with a disability. That’s some powerful stuff for a sixteen-year-old quadriplegic. It only hammers in the message Rapunzel has been stuck on for months now: representation matters.

 

The group that meets on Mondays becomes an actual club. They call themselves the Students’ Rights Club, and they order T-shirts. Rapunzel has painted the logo with her more and more finessed mouth-painting skills. Mr. Breck helps her upload the image and design the T-shirts.

 The Students’ Rights Club petitions the principal of Corona High, a particularly stubborn and unpleasant woman named Ursula. They demand better resources for students with physical and learning disabilities, and organize the formation of a Best Buddies club on campus that develops friendships and organizes joint events between the abled and disabled. Pocahontas’ petition to the school district to turn Columbus Day into Indigenous People’s Day goes through after the Students’ Rights Club organizes an after school phone bank, and Pocahontas gets interviewed about it by the New York Times. Belle, frustrated by the vast depression and anxiety she sees in her fellow AP students under particular stress and pressure to perform well in school, talks to the school counselor about getting access to better mental health resources.

In short, this club is on fire.

* * * * *

It’s winter break, of their junior year, and Merida and Rapunzel’s one-year anniversary is quickly approaching, and it is about time they laid their ghosts to rest.

Merida drives her Vespa over to Rapunzel’s house at dawn and let’s herself into the garage. She steals Jeff’s keys off the kitchen counter with a scrawled apology note, and wakes Rapunzel, who is groggy but delighted to have Merida be the woman she wakes up to. They exchange nothing but looks and nods as Merida pulls Rapunzel up from the bed. There are not even kisses to distract as Merida dresses Rapunzel, today in warm leggings, fuzzy moccasins, a sweatshirt and a thick flannel over it. She puts a beanie over Rapunzel’s ears to keep them warm, and in doing so notices that Rapunzel’s hair has in fact grown long again.

Okay, fine. _One_ kiss. She does look damn cute in that beanie.

They’re on the road. Merida doesn’t put on any music, just reaches behind her to hold Rapunzel’s hand as they drive. She inches through a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru for two coffees; not their usual Starbucks order, unfortunately, but it’ll do.

The sun is still buried beneath the horizon, and the world is dark, quiet, and surreal. It is the magic of pre-dawn where everything and nothing is possible and you are somehow the only person in the entire world. It is eerie and supernatural but also peaceful and reflective.

Miles of blacktop disappears under their wheels until Merida finally pulls off on the Turnpike and parks in a tiny, sandy lot on the coast.

They are here to make amends.

It takes a few minutes to unstrap Rapunzel and the wheelchair, open the back and lower Rapunzel down. It is routine and muscle memory, and Merida hums an old Scottish lullaby as her fingers instinctively act of their own accord to free Rapunzel of the van. With a press of the button on the car key, the van makes the familiar two-beep confirmation that it is indeed locked, and then Merida pushes Rapunzel, with coffees fitted neatly in the cupholders Eugene had designed and the thick Navajo blanket tucked around Rapunzel’s lap. Both girls are barefoot.

They walk down the wooden boardwalk as far as it’ll go, and then into the sand that lines the coast. The sky has become a few shades lighter but the orb of the sun is still nowhere to be seen. Perfect.

It takes a little extra effort and elbow grease for Merida to push the cumbersome chair through the thick sand. There are a few moments where it jerks and the wheel catches on a rock, but it’s okay, and they are here, and there is no rush. Time stretches on before them much like the Atlantic.

Merida parks Rapunzel’s chair right where the tide stops, and Rapunzel practically shimmers in her chair as she watches the great edge of the ocean tickle her un-tickleable feet. She feels the sensation in her heart, even when she can’t feel it feel it. The familiar scrunch of muscles reacting to the first bite of cold water creeping up one’s toes. She is tickled anyway.

Merida sips her coffee and holds the paper cup to Rapunzel’s lips. Rather than sitting in the sand, Merida scrambles her way into Rapunzel’s lap until both are comfortable and wraps the blanket around them.

Neither of them have been to the beach since the accident. Neither could stomach the crushing waves, the choking sand, the tendrils of seaweed. To be frank, neither wanted to. But the topic had been coming up over the last few weeks, about closure and finding peace, about the curvature of the Earth and the curve of their hips and the curve of the wheels on Rapunzel’s chair, and how if it was all a circle than they might as well come back to the beginning.

Rapunzel kisses Merida on the cheek. “This isn’t so bad,” she says, breaking the silence for the first time that day. It is exactly when she speaks that the hump of the sun makes its appearance at the edge of the landscape, turning the sky pink and orange.

“No, it’s not,” Merida agrees. “Although I wish I could forgive the ocean. For what it’s done.”

“We can’t blame the ocean, Mer. What’s happened, happened. And I’ve made wonderful friends because of it. And I’ve learned new skills because of it. And you never left me because of it,” she finishes in a small voice.

“I...Rapunzel. Did you think I was going to leave you?”

“Yes.”

Merida’s eyes fill with tears. “Rapunzel, I don’t give a damn about the packaging. I care about the person inside. And you are still the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

“You are the sun, Mer. You’re my sun.”

The sun – the actual sun – blooms from the horizon, shedding golden light in every direction and casting long shadows on the girls faces as their bodies intertwine and they shiver against one another against the cool December ocean breeze.

They talk about everything. About how Merida’s relationship with her mother has improved fractionally throughout the year, so incremental that Merida’d hardly noticed at the time. About how her mother respects her for putting others before herself, just the way Merida’s mother had done for their family when they’d moved from Scotland. They talk about how Pascal will be the dumbest but friendliest service dog ever. They talk about the party and how no one can change the past. They talk about teachers, and the club, and the privilege they have even when they feel the world is stacked against them. They talk about what it means to be queer and lucky they are that they get to grow and learn from each other every single day. They argue about whose Starbucks order is better (for the thousandth time). They talk about how Aladdin is going to follow Jasmine to college. They talk about college, and where they would like to go, and what they think they will study, and how terrified they are of growing up and doing daunting things like filling out the Common App or taking the SAT.

They talk about cures, and how there aren’t any. They talk about legs, and what Rapunzel would do if she could have hers back for a day. They talk about good luck charms and bear-shaped necklaces and how perhaps the luck they thought they needed had been inside of them all along. The sun climbs and climbs. The wind picks up but the warmth of the sun on their cheeks is just enough to keep its unforgiving chill at bay. Their hair – long and tangled – intertwines and beats around their faces, showing a mind of its own as it dances in the wind. There are things this year that they have lost. There are things that they’ve gained. And even without feeling below her C4 vertebrate, her heart and Merida’s heart are still beating against each other. Their bodies cannot help but continue to dance together.

“You know, Merida. I’ve been thinking. I don’t...I don’t think I would change anything. Even if I could.”

“You know, ‘Punz, I wouldn’t either.”

* * *

_Dear Rapunzel,_

_Today is our graduation day. Wow. It is hard to believe this day has come for us, that we have really crossed this (somewhat arbitrary?) threshold into adulthood and are being thrust forward into this silly and confusing world that somehow makes the most sense when I am looking at it beside you. We did it, babe. Four years of you tutoring me in whichever subject I didn’t grasp, of seeing you on the sidelines of my soccer games and feeling my heart skip a beat. Four years of dirty chais (which are still superior to Passion Tea, silly) and cuddles and babysitting my little brothers. Four years of watching the jocks and the nerds self-segregate, and the glop of the cafeteria food stick to the plates, and of freshman running to first hour as if their lives depend on it. They’re all important ingredients to this ride we call high school. And while I’m pretty ready to be done with this place (Ha, as if you didn’t know. I’ve only been talking about graduation for three years now), I owe it a whole lot. It brought me to you, Punz._

_The first time I fell in love with you, it was because I thought you completed me. I was hard and you were soft. I was tough and you were kind. I was an athlete and you were an artist. You were the calm waters that put out my forest fire, sweet when I was sour. You forgave when I was stubborn, and educated when I would have argued. You were cute and you were brilliant and I kept wanting to talk to you and when I wasn’t talking to you I was thinking of ways to talk to you again._

_The second time I fell in love with you was when you proved me wrong. When you showed me that you could be tough and kind, that you could be stubborn and educational. Rapunzel, damn, you are the strongest woman I have ever met in my entire life. I couldn’t have done what you did. I couldn’t have been strong the way you are. You have showed me time and time again what a woman’s heart is capable of. You remember everyone’s birthday but you also don’t take shit from anybody. You love to sing and bake with me but you also yell louder and deeper than any of the coaches on the sidelines when I’m moving the ball up the field. You are...you. Unapologetically, happily you. You’re not scared of your emotions, Rapunzel. You let them in and feel them as long as they need to be felt. You inspire me every day, my love._

_There were times when we didn’t think this day would come. When we thought the kids at school would be too mean, or the classes would be too hard, or moving through the hallways would be impossible. I’ve watched you cry more over these last two years than I ever wanted. Every tear you shed is a tear too many (although you cried when that bumblebee drowned in the swimming pool last summer, so I don’t know how realistic that is haha). But Rapunzel...regardless, you did it. YOU DID IT! You are graduating salutatorian (dammit, Belle) today. Your name is being printed on a diploma as I write this (I hope they spell it right. Shoot)._

_Rapunzel, I am so proud of you. I love you so much. I can’t wait for us to cross that stage together tonight. No matter what the future brings – no matter whether the scholarship you want comes in, or if you end up taking the gap year, or if it comes down to community college and online classes - I hope you’re as proud as I am of all of your accomplishments and the beautiful, healthy relationship we have built over this roller coaster of a high school experience. I guess that makes us pretty normal, huh? HIgh school is a roller coaster for everyone, after all._

_God, I love you so much, Punz. Cheers to our graduation from this goddamn school, and to many more years of learning. You’re a star._

_Love always,_  
_MER_


End file.
